Memoirs [Worm/Pale]

[keighthundred]

The new town was quieter than I was used to—where there used to be distant car horns and sirens, there was now nothing but the whistling howl of wind at night and the gentle whirring of an air conditioning unit during the day. The house—and it was a house this time, instead of a ramshackle apartment—was almost empty, save for the few scattered furnishings and personal touches left behind from a family that wasn't mine: one or two framed family photos, smooth stones with loving messages inscribed on them, and other things of that nature. They were the kinds of small touches I'd left behind a lifetime ago, and would probably never have again.

I hadn't gotten around to putting them away just yet, but given the amount of time I was spending inside, I probably should've. Part of it was because they were nice to have around, a reminder of something human, but it was mostly because I'd been lost in my work, had felt really sucked into it for what felt like the first time in years. This new house was quiet, comfortable, free, and burnished with the light whisper of melancholy I'd become accustomed to—the perfect environment for a fledgling freelance writer like me.

It was a new start—the third or fourth new start I'd gotten since everything had ended. Kennet was lonely in a way that Boston hadn't been, but I was learning to get used to it. I could type up my articles in peace, and when I needed background noise to drown out the gnawing silence, I just turned on the TV. It wasn't a foolproof method—sometimes, I could hear kids playing and screaming outside on the street, which I found difficult to ignore; sometimes, in the late hours of the night, the TV would cut out to static and murky images I couldn't quite place.

I hadn't gotten around to calling the cable company yet, but it was on my to-do list.

Still, it was an incredible gift, and I was grateful. The Annette of this world wasn't really my mother, but she'd still found it fit to allow me to stay in her grandmother's old house. It'd been the family vacation home for a while, she'd said, but after her parents died and the kids had gotten older, there hadn't been too much reason to use it. Stay there as long as you like, she'd said.

So here I was, alone in my not-quite mother's ancestral home, tapping away at my laptop in the midday glow. A lukewarm mug of tea sat across from me, ignored. I didn't need it anymore. Today's assignment was done—now I was working on a more personal side project.

My memoirs.

It was an exercise in frustration most days, because no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't get the words out—and even if I did, who would ever read them?

I was going to be a superhero.

I shook my head, fingers hovering over the delete key. Ridiculous. Maybe I could pass it off as fiction, if I was lucky. Superheroes didn't exist in this world. Scion had never made it here, so as far as anyone in this universe was concerned, there was no such thing as powers or capes.

There was no such thing as Skitter, Weaver, or Khepri here—not unless I made it so.

I was interrupted by a sharp series of knocks. A salesman or something, probably. They came around often enough that I'd learned to ignore them.

But this time, the knocking didn't stop, and after a minute, I finally stood up and opened the door. The sight before me took a moment to register in my mind: a girl, her face hidden behind a carved wooden deer mask, shrouded in a navy blue cloak, with an opossum standing on her shoulder. And just like that, my whole world shattered at once.

"Hi," the girl said.

My back went ramrod straight, and it felt like everything about me became sharp edges. My hand instinctively reached for weapons that weren't there, and it left me feeling off-balance. It'd happened so quick, I almost hadn't realized I'd done it, until the urge to fight or fly rose out of my gut like bile, and I could no longer ignore it.

No, it couldn't be. My past had been buried, locked away, for the better part of a decade. And yet, here she was. Play dumb, I thought. It was the only tool I had at my disposal.

"...Can I help you?" I asked.

"Yeah." The girl glanced slightly toward her opossum, then turned back to me. "Can we come in?"

She was being awfully polite, for a potentially hostile cape. Maybe it was something to do with her power? Some conditions that needed to be fulfilled for her power to activate. You could never be sure when it came to capes.

I took a long look at the girl and her opossum. "...No."

Something in the girl's otherwise friendly posture slipped slightly. "Are you sure? Because I've got some questions for you that I think would be better had away from prying eyes. Safer."

I gave a strained smile. "I'm sorry, I don't know what you're talking about. That's a nice Halloween costume, though. But it's a couple months early, isn't it?"

The girl, to her credit, hardly reacted. "You're Taylor, right? I've got the right house?"

My throat felt dry. "Yeah."

"Your arrival in Kennet was... noticed. People have, uh, raised concerns, so I'm here to look into those concerns."

People? If she was being honest about her reason for being here, how many more capes were there in town?

The girl noticed the shift in my stance, the change. She saw it in all the ways a twelve year old shouldn't have been able to see. Subtleties and dangers no normal child should pick up on. If I sent her away, slammed the door in her face, it would only confirm her suspicions. She had powers, and I had nothing in my arsenal—nothing but a vague plan and a prayer.

Play dumb, I told myself. This is salvageable.

"...Maybe you should come in," I said.

"Thank you," she said, nodding as she passed the threshold. Her opossum seemed to copy her motion.

The girl quickly made herself at home, sitting down on one of the couches around the coffee table I'd been working at. Hurriedly, I shut my laptop before she could see the screen. "Can I get you anything?" I asked, feigning nonchalance.

The girl nodded, a dip of her mask. "Just water, thanks."

There was something ominous about the way she stared. I scratched my right arm, just above where the skin met plastic. "Okay."

I left, and the girl didn't move to follow.

The kitchen was a bit of a mess—I hadn't cleaned up after lunch yet, so there were still dirty plates and cookware left out on the counter. My eye caught on a slim chef's knife on a cutting board. As quietly as I could, I slipped it into my right sleeve, blade resting against the side of my prosthetic, and then filled a glass of water in the sink.

The girl and her opossum were watching me intently as I returned and set the glass down before her.

"Thank you," she said, taking the glass, but not drinking from it.

I sat opposite her, on an old sofa that had more dust than cushion, and examined my guest in closer detail. She was strawberry blonde, buried in a thicker coat than I would've expected from this time of year. Her opossum had hopped off her shoulder and was resting beside her on the couch, but all four of their eyes were locked right onto mine in a way that was equal parts unnerving and hysterical.

Jesus, she was just a kid. At a guess, she was maybe twelve years old, about as threatening as a toddler. And yet I was terrified of her.

"What is it you want with me?" I asked, unable to contain myself any longer.

"I wanted to start with some questions," the girl said. "Questions about you."

I gently lowered my right sleeve against my lap, feeling the dulled edge of the knife against my leg. It wouldn't take longer than a moment to unsheathe it with my other hand. "Ask away."

She nodded. "Why are you in Kennet?"

"I needed a quiet place to work," I said. "A family friend suggested I stay at a house she'd inherited."

"What do you mean by 'work'?"

I tapped the top of my laptop. "I'm a writer."

"A writer of what?"

"Magazines, mostly. Some newspapers."

She was silent. Apparently that wasn't the answer she was looking for. "I'm sorry," I said. "I'm not sure what you're looking for."

"What are you?"

I froze for a beat. I wasn't quite sure what she meant by that, but my thoughts ran off in dangerous directions. "...A writer," I said eventually. "Like I just said."

"I'm not asking what you do. You have power, but you managed to slip through the barrier without any difficulty. You weakened the perimeter just by walking through it. So—what are you?" she asked again.

Perimeter? What was she talking about? And what was the point of all this? If she was here, if she knew my name, shouldn't she already know who I was? I'd thought she was a vengeful cape on a mission to kill Khepri, but she didn't seem to know who I was—just that I had a power.

"I really don't know what you mean," I said.

"What are you?" she repeated. "Three times, I've asked."

Something in her tone threw me off—like she'd imbued her words with a threat. My fingers slipped a little closer to the knife. "You know who I am," I said. "It's why you're here, isn't it? You know my name."

"Who, but not what. That's what I'm trying to figure out. It would ease a lot of concerns if you told me."

"Be serious. You're telling me you're not here because of Khepri?"

"Khepri? You mean like the Egyptian god?"

I shook my head. "No, not a god. It was just a label. Do you really not know who I am?"

"Labels have power," she said. Her opossum hopped onto her lap and nudged her stomach, but she ignored it. "Why do you think I'm here because of Khepri?"

"Don't play dumb," I said, scowling. "We both know you're here because of what I did when I was her."

She froze, as if struck by lightning. "...What do you mean, you were her?"

Did she really not know? Maybe I'd misjudged the situation. Maybe she didn't know anything after all.

"So that's what's going on," she said before I could speak. "Why didn't you just say so from the start? Why hide it? I can see its connection to you clear as day."

My blood ran cold. Vaguely, I realized that my hands were shaking, her words hitting something dark. She was a trump, I realized—a trump who could see powers.

And she could see that mine was still there.

After Contessa had...after she'd left me in this world, I had thought—hoped, really—that my powers had been severed, cut entirely. Some nights I'd wished desperately for the pathway to open again, to regain some semblance of what I'd once had, but it never did. After seven years, I'd convinced myself it was over, and that I was free from my passenger.

Except she was living proof I'd never be free, wasn't she?

I repositioned my prosthetic arm to sit against my real one. The tip of the knife sat in easy reach of my fingers. She didn't know who I was, but if she could see my powers, and I couldn't use them, I was in real trouble. She'd treat me like a threat when I was defenseless. She'd bring me back into a situation I was in no position to face again, no matter how much I wanted it.

All I had now were my words. I had to keep her off balance, keep her guessing. As soon as she thought I was in a position of weakness, I was fucked.

I leaned forward. "A question for a question, then."

The girl's eyes never left my face for a moment. The opossum followed suit, in a manner that left me just a little bit unnerved. But neither of them were looking at my hands.

"Who sent you?"

I couldn't see her face behind the mask, but I saw her shoulders hunch inward, she leaned in a bit despite her best attempts to stay straight.

"The local Others. Why?"

My fingers wrapped around the handle of the blade, still hidden from view. "No, don't be vague. Who sent you?"

When the opossum turned into another little girl, transforming in the blink of an eye, I wasn't as surprised as I should've been. There had been something off about it from the moment I'd laid eyes on it. The real surprise was that she wasn't part of the deer mask girl's power, but instead an entirely separate person with a seemingly separate changer ability. She was a little younger than her friend, blonde, wearing a black t-shirt displaying a cartoon opossum guzzling trash from a can, surrounded by a ring of text that read: Garbage Day.

"You're in safe company," the opossum girl yelped, "she's unarmed!"

The deer mask girl tensed, leaning forward as if preparing to either run or lunge at me, despite what her friend had just said.

Damn it.

I drew the knife, standing up. The girls watched me carefully, like judging a frightened animal. "What are you going to do?" the deer girl asked. "Attack us?"

My fingers tightened around the handle. I took a step forward, and both of them reacted visibly, shifting their postures. I almost wanted to laugh—they had me surrounded, outnumbered, dead-to-rights, but they were still scared of a one-armed woman with a flimsy piece of cookware. I was reminded of my career as a villain, the authority I'd commanded. I supposed some of that had stuck, even now.

"That'd be the smart thing to do, wouldn't it?" I asked.

"It would be dumb. Super dumb," she said. "All we're doing is asking questions—breaking the laws of hospitality over that? You'd be screwing yourself over for very little gain."

"Super smart," the opossum girl added helpfully.

"I don't know what laws you're talking about," I said. "But the way I see it, you're in my house, you've got some idea of who I am, and you've been less than friendly. I can put two and two together. I think someone sent you here to hurt me, someone who knows who I am. I want to know who."

Contessa? Teacher?

"Matthew," she said easily, as if I was supposed to know who that was. "And I wasn't sent here to hurt you. Honestly, I think you're being unfair—I've been totally friendly so far."

The opossum girl huffed. "Not me. I've been on my worst behavior."

"My turn," the deer girl said. "What should I call you? Khepri? Taylor? Or do you have other titles you'd prefer?"

"Taylor." I gripped the knife tighter. "How did you find me? I thought Contessa sealed the way through."

The girl furrowed her eyebrows. "Sealed the way through what?"

"Don't mess with me. Through worlds. You came through one yourself, didn't you? That's how you got here in the first place."

"You're talking about Paths?"

"Paths, portals, whatever."

"No, not whatever—names are important. Do you mean Paths?"

"Sure," I said, not wanting to argue over something so unimportant.

"I'm not aware of any Paths being sealed recently, and I don't know who Contessa is. I didn't come through one to get here." She shrugged casually, in a way that reminded me a little of Golem, back in the day. "I walked, mostly. What's your goal in Kennet?"

"I told you, I'm just here for some peace and quiet while I write." It felt so odd to be trading back and forth comments while I held them at knife point. I didn't get it—these relentless questions. If she knew who I was, what was the point of this? To waste my time, to distract me while others set up an ambush? To throw off my guard? "What do you want from me? Why are you here?"

"To figure out if you're a threat to our town or not." She let the answer hang in the air, staring pointedly at my knife. "Are you?"

"I—"

The opossum girl flinched. I'd moved, unconsciously, pulling my knife into more of a combative stance.

I didn't even notice.

I stared at that knife in my hands for a long time, and then back at the two girls. And my heart sank, because I was the bad guy here, wasn't I?

Yes, these two were clearly capes, but as far as I could tell, they didn't seem to have any idea who I was. They'd just noticed a new parahuman moving into their town and decided to investigate, and here I was brandishing a knife at them. As far as first impressions went, this was as low as I could get.

I was supposed to be older and wiser now, but I'd still let my paranoia get the best of me.

I'm not Weaver anymore.

I put the knife on the couch, out of the two girls' reach, and sat back down, sinking into the cushions.

"No," I said, my mouth tasting like sand. "I'm not." I looked up at the two of them, who were so young, and so small. "Are you two here to hurt me?"

"Not unless you try to hurt us or innocents first," the deer girl said.

"I'm not just here for moral support," the opossum girl argued. "I'd beat you up so bad. Opossums are great at fighting."

That girl had a twisted sense of humor, I thought. "You guys are, what? Local heroes?"

The deer girl looked at me funny. "Something like that, I guess. We've never used those exact words, but I guess that's sort of the job description. We're protectors of Kennet, and the Others living here."

"I'm a hero," the opossum girl interjected, snorting. It felt like there was a joke behind those words, but I wasn't quite sure what that might be.

I glanced at the knife again. "Sorry. I think we got off on the wrong foot. I thought you were… people from my past. I panicked."

"Is that something we're going to have to worry about? Enemies of yours following you to Kennet?"

I shook my head. "I haven't had anything like that happen in over seven years. You would've been the first. And… for the record, I don't have my power anymore."

"Anymore? What does that mean?"

"I was cut off from it," I said. "For my own good. Please don't ask."

"I have to figure out what you're capable of," the deer girl said. "You weakened the perimeter, and that's a threat to us."

"I don't know what perimeter you're talking about," I said. "If I tripped over some of your town's defenses, it was unintentional."

"What about that thing you're connected to? Is that… Khepri?"

"In a sense," I said. "I've heard other names for it. Queen Administrator. It's my passenger." I leaned in. "But what do you mean I'm connected to it? I was supposed to be cut off—that's why I don't have my power anymore."

"If that's the case, yeah, I can kind of see that. The connection between you and it is frayed, but it's still there." She paused. "What is it? Because it's really freaking huge."

"What do you mean, what is it? You're acting like this is the first time you've seen one—but if you can see my passenger, shouldn't you have seen others already? Your friend's, your own?"

The deer girl glanced at her friend. "...We don't have anything like that. I'm a Finder, not a Host. Snowdrop's a boon companion."

I had no idea what any of that meant, but I had two running theories as to who these girls were: either they were native to this world, or had they also come from another Earth, like I had.

And either answer would be concerning in different ways: if they were originally from this world, it meant that powers were spreading here, and would have serious ramifications; if they were from another Earth, they might someday realize who I was, which meant I had to leave town as soon as possible. Despite my earlier paranoia, I was leaning toward the first theory, because these capes seemed to have their own lingo, their own terms for things. I wasn't sure what a Finder was, but from context I assumed it was something like a thinker, with emphasis on learning current information rather than something like precognition.

"How long have you been doing this?" I asked.

"If it's okay with you," the deer girl said, "I'd rather not answer that."

"Fine," I said, even though it wasn't. "Look, you want to know if I'm a threat or not? I don't have my power anymore, I'm missing an arm, and I'm not in contact with anyone who might be dangerous. I'm a freelance writer. I write articles for whatever rag will pay me. That's all."

"You write for magazines."

"Yeah, that's right."

"Okay, this might sound like a really dumb question, but—that's a thing? Magazines hire people like you to write articles?"

I chose not to take that as a jab at my image. "There are a lot of shitty tabloids out there," I said, crossing my real arm over my prosthetic. "They need something to fill their pages, so they contract out. It pays the bills."

"That's cool," she said. "Sorry, I wasn't judging. I was just, you know, surprised."

"I'm judging," the opossum girl—Snowdrop—said. "Magazines are good for more than just being comfy beds."

"Uh, sorry." I didn't know what to make of that, but the situation was defusing, at least. It had to mean something that their postures were more relaxed. The me of eight years ago would probably have made a mess of things, and it was comforting to know that I'd at least changed in that way. "I never asked—what do I call you two?"

"I'm Avery. This is Snowdrop," the deer girl said, ruffling her friend's hair.

I frowned. Snowdrop sounded like a cape name, but Avery didn't. "Those are your real names?"

"Yeah?" Avery almost looked confused. "Names have power, right? Giving a false name would dilute that, or it'd give people more avenues to affect you."

Now it was my turn to be confused. "Is that how your power works? It's based on, what, associations?"

"...Isn't that how all Practice works? Associations, patterns, connotations?"

"Uh—what's practice?"

The girl suddenly froze, as if she'd just turned to stone. "You don't know what Practice is?"

I shook my head. "I'm not from around here. Is that a general term for powers in this world, or…?"

"I mean, basically, yeah," Avery said. She hesitated. "Taylor, where exactly are you from?"

I sighed. In for a penny… "Another world," I said. "You wouldn't have heard of it here."

"Another world?" she asked. Then she cleared her throat. "Does that mean you're not human?"

"As far as I know, I'm as human as it gets."

"But…" Avery grumbled in frustration. "You're not an Other?"

"I have no idea what that means."

Avery stopped talking for a moment, giving me a very long look at that I couldn't quite place. "I think," she said, closing her eyes, rubbing at her forehead, "I think I need to go have a long conversation with the others."

I really didn't like how ominous that sounded—but before I could say anything, the two of them were already off the couch and moving for the door.

"Wait—!"

But they ignored me, disappearing through the threshold, and by the time I followed them out, they had already vanished entirely.

 

[Schmee]

I am extremely interested in where this goes.

 

[Dr Heaven M.D.]

I am extremely interested in where this goes.

Click to shrink...

Hard, hard ditto. I am so freaking invested in this, you have no idea.

And I do enjoy the idea of Taylor becoming a writer. Hopefully association with the Kennetteers will help her work through her emotions more easily. And hopefully she mentors Verona into not rushing towards monsterhood and Avery towards being more confident.

 

[Amazing Abzan]

Oh I like this. I feel like Kennet could be very good for Taylor: it's got enough going on that she can be part of the action again if she wants to, but she'd be doing so as part of a community, which could reign in some of her worst traits and just generally is a healthier way to go than "teenage warlord" or "one-woman crusade against the apocalypse." She'd also be stuck in more of a mentor/advisor role (unless she gets her powers back, of course), which again feels a lot healthier than both her past caping activities and her current lifestyle. It would give her something meaningful to do, some way to make her past important and valuable rather than keeping it as a dark secret, and would force her to actually engage with people and make some connections.

Looking at where we are in the Pale timeline, it seems like we've passed the Blue Heron, but Snow was introduced as a "boon companion" rather than a familiar so that ritual hasn't happened yet. That seems like a good time to insert Taylor: things are relatively stable, so it's easy to bring Taylor into the fold, but the girls are experienced and powerful enough to make their own decisions rather than being lead around by all the local the Others. I also don't think any of the conspirators have been outed yet, so Taylor won't need to suppress the urge to go fight someone with no powers and one arm.

Actually, speaking of Taylor fighting, I wonder if she was drawn to Kennet by the Carmine influence it's under? She's retired and powerless, but she's still got a long and bloody history, and she drew a knife on Avery without even thinking about it so she still falls back on those instincts when she feels threatened. She actually kind of fits the profile the of the sort of Aware/ignorant Other who would get "invited" to the Carmine Contest, so I'm glad she's starting to get some hints about things now instead of at summer's end.

 

[keighthundred]

Capes. There were fucking capes in Kennet. That they all knew where I lived seemed less important than the fact I finally had found capes. The smart thing to do, I knew, was probably to leave town immediately. It was the sort of thing any normal person would do. It was the most surefire way to keep myself out of their crosshairs and I was in no shape to fight. All I had to do was run back to Boston with my tail between my legs, try again somewhere else. I'd had four fresh starts already—what was a fifth?

But I couldn't. I'd been alone for the last seven years, isolated, kept away from anything resembling my old life as much as possible. And I knew it was probably a good thing that I had, but it had hurt. It was like I'd moved to a foreign country and never picked up the language, and I'd spent the last decade of my life just one beat out of step, mingling amongst the people of this world but never quite belonging.

Dad used to understand. We'd talked about it at length, about the things we'd missed from Earth Bet. The people we'd missed. Our friends and family, a world away.

I didn't know when it had changed for him. I didn't see the moment when everything had clicked for him, and he was able to move on, chat about local politics and sports with his head held high, meet new people and start new relationships without a single stumbling point. I was happy for him—really, I was—but…

It wasn't me. Kennet probably wasn't me, either, but it was the closest I'd gotten to anything like what I'd had in seven years. And besides—I had my memoirs to work on, didn't I? And this town had brought out a level of productivity in me that I hadn't seen in a long, long time. I'd actually managed to pump out two whole chapters in the time since I'd arrived in town, which, compared to the meager scattering of notes I'd had before, was a world of progress. That meant I had to stay, didn't it?

I decided to play things slow, keep my head down, and ensure I looked as non-threatening as possible. I wasn't that stupid teenage girl anymore, I could do this the right way. I kept to myself, dived into my work, and didn't go outside unless I had to. The most I did was a little research: a few cursory Wooble searches on Finders and Boon Companions. I hadn't come up with anything useful, in the end.

The whole time, I felt like there were eyes on me—some supernatural sixth sense that warned me I was being watched. I should've called someone. My dad, Annette. Anyone. But I didn't. I wasn't really sure why. Maybe I was scared they'd convince me to go, leave all of this behind.

But nobody came to visit me. Nobody knocked on my door. I kept my head down, and the situation continued in its uneasy balance. As long as I didn't push, and they didn't push, both sides were content to pretend the other didn't exist. But it couldn't last forever.

Eventually, about a week after the deer girl—Avery—had visited me, I had no choice but to go out. I was out of groceries, and there was no way I could stretch the bare leftovers in the fridge any further. I needed essentials. If Kennet's capes were watching, they'd know that. They wouldn't panic at the sight of my leaving my house.

I hoped they wouldn't, at least.

It was an uneasy drive to the grocery store. The entire time I felt like a sword of Damocles was hovering over me. How many ambushes would I have set up if this had been me back in the day? How many different ways would I have managed to stop myself? What would I have done if I had considered myself a threat? The thoughts weren't good. They were the kind of things I'd forced myself to forget, taught myself to push down.

But in the end, nothing came. No capes were waiting in the bushes, no PRT-like groups had dropped in to snatch me up. I saw nothing except stop signs and schoolkids before I made it to the local supermarket. I didn't think I'd ever been so anxious picking out cheerios.

"Excuse me," someone said. "Can you help me out?"

I turned. A woman with a bland, average looking face was standing beside me. In every way, she was as nondescript as possible—mid-twenties, dark eyes, a boring blue blouse and boring gray slacks, basket in hand.

But there was one thing that stuck out about her—her hair looked a lot like mine. Black, curly, flowing down to her shoulders. She pointed toward a box of cereal on the top shelf that was just out of her reach. I stood about a head taller than her.

"Yeah," I said, pushing my cart out of the way. It was a struggle, reaching up with my non-dominant hand, but I managed to grab the box of cornflakes without fumbling it. "Here."

"Thanks," she said, smiling wide, dropping the box in her basket. "I'm Lis."

My pulse quickened. She wasn't one of them, was she? "Nice to meet you," I said, forcing a smile, and turned to move down the aisle.

She followed me.

Fuck.

I took a deep breath, and continued forth, briefly glancing at my grocery list before leaving the aisle. I tried my very hardest not to react to Lis trailing behind me like the world's most threatening puppy.

Don't act threatening, I told myself. Be calm and collected.

I put three onions into a plastic bag and deposited it in my cart.

"Hey," Lis said.

I winced, slowly turning to meet her gaze. "Yes?"

"Aren't you going to ask why I'm following you?"

It took all my strength not to react. I turned away, casually reaching for some potatoes. "No."

"That doesn't sound like a very smart move."

I ignored her, tying the bag shut and dropping it in my cart. Bread. I needed bread. And some pasta, and—

"So what do you do?" Lis asked.

I bit my lip. "I'm a writer," I said, refusing to look at her. I was starting to sound like a broken record. Bread, I told myself. I started moving for the bread aisle.

A girl cut us off halfway there—a younger girl, around the same age that Avery had been, with dark skin, brown hair with red highlights, and a single earring on her right ear. It wasn't exactly a cape costume, but something about her radiated confidence nonetheless.

Jesus, I thought. It was like a fucking clown car with them. How many more of these capes were hiding in plain sight?

"Lis," the girl said, her voice low, "what do you think you're doing?"

"Keeping tabs." Lis shrugged. "You weren't clear on how you wanted me to do it, and I wasn't learning anything watching her from a distance."

The girl shook her head. "You have no idea what you're messing with. Seriously. You don't know what she's capable of."

Lis only smiled, baring her teeth in a vulpine grin. It was unnerving, to say the least. "And you do?"

"Leave," the girl commanded.

"What?"

"Leave, get out of this store, move away from us. Don't make me ask again."

Lis huffed. "Fine. I'm going." On her way toward the exit, she gave one final glance back toward us. "You didn't have to be so rude, you know. I was just trying to help."

The girl rolled her eyes, waiting silently until Lis was all the way gone and had vanished out the door. Then she turned to me. "Can we talk?"

"Yeah," I said. Then I glanced at my cart. "Do you mind if I finish shopping first? It shouldn't be long."

She swept her gaze over the store, which was relatively quiet at this time of day, and gave me a curt nod. "That's fine."

We walked in silence, and I tried not to stare. I held my gaze directly forward, fingers on the cart handle, feeling the little vibrations in the metal as I pushed along. My prosthetic arm hung loosely at my side.

"For the record, I didn't do anything to her," I said, reaching for a loaf of sliced wheat. "Lis, I mean."

"I know. I was listening in." She was watching me intently from a few feet away. "I'm Lucy."

Lucy. Another real name. I was beginning to notice it was a habit with these capes.

"Taylor," I said, dropping the bread into my cart. I started pushing it, and Lucy followed. "But you probably already knew that."

"I did."

"You've been watching me, right? Testing me? I have to ask—if you're here, does that mean I passed?"

She shrugged. "We've talked about you."

"But?"

"But we've had a lot on our plate lately, so we haven't had too much time to go over your thing. And there's still a lot of unknowns when it comes to your thing. Sorry."

"You could've just asked me," I said.

"Maybe." But there was a look in her face that said maybe not. "You said that you weren't from this world, right?"

"Sure."

"Where are you from, then?"

"Originally, a city called Brockton Bay," I said, stopping at the pasta aisle. "In a world called Earth Bet. An alternate universe."

Lucy frowned.

"You think I'm lying," I said, grabbing a box of spaghetti.

She hesitated, just slightly, before shaking her head. "I think you believe what you're saying."

"Crazy, then."

"Eh. Crazy's kind of a crappy way to put it."

"You're burying the lede," I said, pushing my cart forth. "You don't believe what I'm telling you."

"No, I wouldn't say that just yet. I'm not making any final judgments at this point. Still trying to figure you out."

I sighed, moving toward the registers. At this time of day, there wasn't even a line—I just walked right up and started placing my items on the counter. Without being asked, Lucy stepped in to help, transferring the groceries over faster than I could manage with just one hand.

"Do you have a rewards card with us?" the cashier asked.

"No," I said, looking up at him. He was a younger guy, barely out of high school, with greasy hair and a face full of acne. He glanced at Lucy, then back at me. I wondered, briefly, what he must've thought of us—a woman being trailed by a girl that kept throwing furtive glances her way when she thought she wasn't looking.

"Would you like to sign up for one? It's free, gets you ten percent off all your purchases including this one—"

I shook my head.

"Okay."

I waited for him to scan my groceries while Lucy watched silently in my periphery. The whole process was nerve wracking. She'd said I was an unknown, but that was true in both directions. I didn't know anything about her or what she was capable of. I'd learned long ago never to let my guard down around capes, and here was one that was comfortable enough to hang around me out of costume. Either she was friendly, or she was extremely, extremely dangerous—and I didn't like my chances with that coin flip.

It wasn't until we were on the way to my car that Lucy spoke again. "If you're cool with me asking," she said, "what happened to your arm?"

"I was in a desperate spot," I said, popping open my trunk. "Got trapped under something heavy, too heavy to move. My arm was mostly gone anyway. It was the only way to get myself free."

She raised an eyebrow. "You cut it off?"

"Of course not," I said, tossing the bags into my car haphazardly. "I asked someone else to do it."

For two heartbeats, Lucy was dead silent. She gave me a funny look—halfway between confused and strangled.

What did I say?

Then she cleared her throat. "Would this be related to your power? Or—the power you used to have?"

"No. It was mostly unrelated." I shut my trunk. "Is that all you wanted to ask?"

"What was your power?"

"Bug control," I said. "I used to be able to control all bugs up to a certain radius."

"...That's it?"

"It was more useful than you'd think. I could sense through my bugs, keep track of pretty much everything in a four block radius."

Lucy nodded. "Your power had a theme? Control—controlling bugs, controlling environments and situations?"

"Yeah." I was impressed that she'd made the connection so quickly. "You mind if I ask you a question back?"

"I can't promise I'll answer it, but yeah. Go ahead."

"I've been dying to know," I said. "What's 'practice'?"

Lucy shifted awkwardly. "This is going to sound really lame, but—"

I sighed.

"—the less you know, the better."

"Yeah, I've heard that before."

"Well, this time, it's true. Because the more you know, the more vulnerable you are. It means more things out there can prey on you. Knowledge is dangerous."

"I feel like being left in the dark is more dangerous."

"Trust me. It's not. Innocence protects people. You seem to not know what Practice is, and from what you've said to me so far, I think I believe you. Keep it that way, alright? If you keep digging, you'll start picking things up that you won't be prepared for, which can be really bad. I've had some people I know—classmates, friends—get into some deep trouble because they stuck their noses into things they only partially understood."

I started pushing the cart over to a corral, and Lucy followed. "That's kind of why I'm asking you to explain to me these things," I said. "I've been around the block once or twice in my day. I'm no stranger to powers I don't understand, secrets that get people killed, danger beyond what I can handle. It helps to know as much as you can, and I get the feeling that you know a lot."

"In this case, it doesn't help. Trust me. Have you ever picked up any information where just knowing about it put you at risk?"

I thought about Cauldron, about powers and Scion.

"Yeah. Most of my career was like that."

Lucy nodded. "Then I hope you understand why I wouldn't want to talk about it."

On some level, I understood. After Echidna, cape teams had started disappearing, people had started dying, just because they wanted to get the truth out to more people. Knowledge could be a dangerous thing, especially when you didn't know everything at play. But I could also read between the lines. She didn't trust me. None of them did, not yet. In their eyes, I was an unknown, a threat—which was ridiculous, because none of them knew the first thing about me. They hadn't even known my powers. It was almost comical; mistrusted not because of my actions, but because of what they weren't sure of.

"I've got one big question for you," Lucy said suddenly. "I need you to answer this as honestly as you can. Give me the first thing you think of when I say this word."

I frowned. "Okay."

"Furs."

"Rachel."

Lucy blinked. "Huh. Who's that?"

I sighed, pushing the cart into a row of other carts. "Someone who was important to me. She wore a lot of fur coats."

"Okay." She was silent for a moment, lost in thought. And then she nodded. "Okay. There is something I can tell you. Be careful with who you talk to. There's kind of a messy situation going on in Kennet right now, and not everyone you meet is trustworthy."

A situation? Villains? "Should I be worried?"

"Maybe. Look, everyone who's been allowed to stay here is meant to be working to protect Kennet, but that doesn't mean they don't also have ulterior motives. I'm not saying they'll hurt you, especially if you keep yourself innocent, but I'm not saying they won't, either. If anyone strange comes up to you, try to leave. Avoid them."

"Someone strange?" I scoffed. "Like Lis?"

"Yeah. Exactly like her."

I forced out a laugh. "You make it sound like there's a conspiracy going on in town."

I really didn't like the fact that Lucy didn't respond to that.

"Just be careful," she said after a beat of silence. She pulled out a scrap of paper and a pen. "I'll give you my phone number. If you see anything weird, call me. Don't do anything else. And I really mean it when I say this: don't try to use your power. Don't try to reach out to it—your patron. Khepri or Queen Administrator or whoever."

I took a breath. "You don't have to worry about that."

There had been times, over the last seven years, that I'd fallen low enough to the point where I'd wanted my power back. But those times had been few and far between. Honestly, I was terrified of it—of what would happen if my passenger ever came back. I'd lost myself, toward the end of Gold Morning. I'd lost almost everything that had made me me.

I didn't even know how much of me was left.

"I really can't take that chance. I don't know what granted you its power, but—"

"Honestly," I said. "I won't. There was a good reason I was cut off from my power." I sighed. "I was too far gone at the end of everything to even really make the choice to take it away. It took two bullets to the head to stop it from getting worse. To bring me back. I'm not in any hurry to recreate that."

"Uh…" Lucy's eyes darted to the scars on my forehead. I wasn't sure if she believed me, and I didn't really care. I started moving back to my car, and she followed. "Hey," she said. "If you're really scared of it, I can try something."

I gave her an unamused look. "Something?"

"Don't worry. It's simple. A diagram—a connection blocker. It's some of the most basic Practice you can do." She retrieved some chalk from her bag. "Mind if I draw something on your prosthetic? It'll work better if it's something attached to you, something that's part of you or your identity."

I frowned. I didn't know how this was supposed to help, but I held out my prosthetic arm anyway. "Sure. Go ahead."

She held it firm with her left hand, and with her right, began to draw a series of geometric shapes—lines connected at right angles forming quarter circles, all contained within a larger circle. There was an easy confidence to her strokes, as if she'd done all this a million times before.

"Okay," she said, finishing up the last few lines. "Here we g—"

There was a bang so loud I thought a gun had gone off. My prosthetic arm shattered like it was a bomb, bits of plastic cracking so deep it cleaved the whole thing into a dozen little pieces. A thin cloud of chalk dust floated into the air. My heart skipped a beat, and I found myself staring at what used to be my right arm. I'd had that prosthetic for seven years. It had become a part of me, and now it was gone.

"...Was that supposed to happen?" I asked, breath wavering.

Lucy took a few steps back, which I really didn't like.

"Lucy? Was that supposed to happen?"

Slowly, arduously, she shook her head. "I think you should go home," she said. All of her candidness from earlier was gone, locked behind a tight lipped grimace. "We'll talk soon."

"Lucy—"

But she was already moving away, walking quickly, her eyes never leaving the remnants of my prosthetic for a moment. I wanted to stop her, to grab her and force her to answer my questions, but I knew that would only burn my bridges with the town's capes. Honestly, I wasn't even sure if I could. I had no idea what Lucy or her friends were capable of. They were capes of unknown strength and number. If they wanted to, they could probably beat me in a fight, because I'd have no way to defend myself. I had no powers, no weapons, and now I didn't even have my prosthetic arm.

All I could do was watch helplessly as Lucy disappeared around the corner, vanishing from sight, wondering the whole time what the hell was happening with my passenger.

 

[underscore]

Queen Administrator *did not like that*
At least is my guess of what happened

 

[Dr Heaven M.D.]

Lucy, I get you just got spooked, but c'mon.

 

[keighthundred]

There was a spider on the nightstand, slowly crawling along the limestone surface, navigating between dusty forgotten picture frames like an explorer staking new ground. It had been taking up residence in that general area for the last twenty-four, building a web that strung loosely between the wall and the nightstand.

I grit my teeth. Stop.

The spider continued to weave its web without so much as a hitch in its movements. It was a good sign. My power still hadn't returned.

And yet…

A few seconds later, the spider stopped in place. Was it a coincidence? I couldn't discount the chance that it wasn't. I watched it for what felt like hours, poring over each minute movement, each little jittering bend of its legs. And every few minutes, I'd reach out to it and think:

Stop.

And every time, I wasn't sure if its actions were controlled by me or if it was just pure coincidence. It couldn't have been me, could it? I would've known if I had my powers back. I'd feel it. I wouldn't feel so trapped inside my own body. I'd have that wide arrange of senses again, that local omniscience that I'd grown to rely on when I was a cape.

But I didn't. I was still as blind and helpless as I'd been for the last seven years.

"Damn it," I said, shaking my head, turning back to my laptop. My quota for today was pretty much fulfilled; even though I'd been distracted, a nonsense article covering an online microcelebrity harassing a public official was something I could've done in my sleep. It was a stupid controversy, like so many things I wrote about. All I had to do now was turn it in in the morning. I shut my computer off and put it on the ground beside my bed, uneasily watching the spider on my nightstand the whole time. It was still on my mind by the time I finally drifted off to sleep.

It started, as always, with gold.

A miniature sun fell upon us, melting the platform to slag and the people along with it. I rushed to the edge. I flung myself over. I was too slow. My body ripped itself apart as I fell into the ocean and then morphed, grew into some horrifying monstrosity approximating flesh. I swallowed sea water as I fought to stay alive.

I couldn't breathe.

A beam of golden light slashed its way across the landscape, ripping through the battlefield. It split mountains and tore apart capes. He was difficult to look at, blindingly bright and his eyes full of rage. So human. He looked so human.

I stood on unsteady feet, shaking. My body was out of my control. I was held up by the two capes next to me. Doormaker and Clairvoyant. One had their hand grasped in mine. The other held my stump, weeping pus. Drool ran down my cheek and my jaw clenched so hard I thought my teeth might shatter. My attention was spread across thousands of people through millions of portals. Every parahuman I could find. All under my control.

I made them leap. I made them fight. I made them die.

I couldn't breathe.

I reached out to my swarm, and with a thought, struck out at him. A thousand attacks unleashed all at once. Blasts of light, rays of fire, swirling masses of beast and bug. It was for nothing. He took them like water against his skin.

A woman was torn apart in Scion's hands. A man was ripped to atoms. A cabin blown away. Some bodies were left half dismembered on the ground, others I carried off to be fixed and thrown at him again. I barely even noticed. My eyes were only on him.

I couldn't breathe.

A form approached me: a girl with curly black hair, glasses, and an enraptured gaze. "Wake up," she said. She hadn't moved her lips, and even if she had, I shouldn't have been able to understand it. "Wake up."

Wake up.

I commanded my swarm to attack, and—

I woke up gasping for breath, forcing down air but still unable to get enough. It was like there'd been a weight on my chest, pressing down, choking me. It was gone now, but the pressure still lingered. And the spider…

The spider was still on the nightstand, and it was looking my way. It was almost like it was staring at me.

I peeled my eyes away like they'd been burned, rubbed them, and climbed out of bed. It was just a dream. A spider. It didn't mean anything. I had dreams like this all the time. None of it meant anything.

I had work to do.

At my kitchen table, I finished the article, gave it a quick editing pass, and emailed it to my supervisor. That had gone simply enough. Then I made breakfast, which was significantly more annoying. Breaking eggs one-handed was something I'd had to practice quite a bit, but it was a skill I'd never quite managed to master, and this time I ended up with bits of eggshell in the pan.

Damn it.

The whole time my food was cooking, I tried very hard not to think about my dream, about the crushing weight on my chest, about the spider on the nightstand that wouldn't leave. Breakfast tasted like shit—undersalted, overcooked.

My phone rang, displaying a familiar name: Erica Murray. My local supervisor at the Chronicle-Journal, one of the more well-known papers in the area. Out of all of my contracts, this one was one of the more important ones. More than others, it opened doors, kept my bills paid, and I was kept on their payroll on a semi-permanent basis, which was more than I could say for most of my jobs.

So I answered as quickly as I could. "Hello?" I said, holding my phone to my ear.

"Taylor?"

"Hey, Erica."

"Oh, thank God your phone's still working. I'm calling about your current assignment. The one about the social media gaffe with the, uh, internet personality?"

"Sharon Griggs? Yeah, that's done." I frowned. "I emailed it to you this morning, didn't I? Is there a problem?"

A nervous laugh rang through the speaker. "Oh, you could say that. Our entire system is down, Taylor. Someone in the office clicked a bad link, and whoops—our databases, internet access, email servers, everything—it's all locked up. I only managed to get this call out to you because we've talked before, and your number's saved in my personal phone."

"Ouch. Sounds like a mess."

"Oh, yes. It is. We've got people working on it, but it could take days or weeks, so right now it's like we've gone back in time thirty years. We're faxing things to the Thunder Bay office, Taylor. That's how bad it is. I'm calling to see if it's at all possible for you to print out a physical copy, bring it into the Kennet office for us?"

I sighed. I didn't want to have to go out if I didn't have to, but this job paid for a significant portion of my expenses. I probably couldn't survive without it. "Yeah," I said. "I'll be there in half an hour."

"Thanks, Taylor. You're a lifesaver."

She hung up, and I was left alone in the silence of the house. It took only a few minutes for me to print out my article and get dressed. I wasn't in the habit of dressing nice—whatever clean clothes I had in my closet were usually good enough for me. In this case, it was a plain pair of jeans, a plain gray shirt, and a plain green-gray coat.

On the way out, the spider on my nightstand was nowhere to be seen.

There was something discomforting about driving, about the way the world passed around me, unerring and ephemeral. There was something I never liked about the way I was separated from it but still moving through it, watching but never being able to properly interact. It was a constant reminder that I didn't have my powers anymore, couldn't reach out and touch things the way I'd used to. Especially here, in Kennet, when I knew I was being watched everywhere I went.

The Kennet office for the Chronicle-Journal was about fifteen minutes away from my house, in a small block of office buildings and warehouses, flanked by rows of trees. It made for an interesting effect: these concrete structures fighting against the procession of nature broaching in from the opposite fields. Kennet was a small town, and it showed here, in the way that grass fought its way up through cracks in the pavement, undeterred and unattended. The parking lot itself was decaying; Kenent's losing front in the war against the forces of nature. It was more potholes than pavement, and today, it was filled almost to the breaking point with cars.

The emergency had drawn a lot of people to the office, it seemed. I found a single open spot in the back, wild grass growing through a wide crack down the center. Papers folded neatly in my bag, I left my car, moving for the office's front door.

There was a rustling behind me as I left the parking lot, and I froze.

Fuck, come on. I was being good, I was keeping my head down. I was only here because I had to be. There was no reason for anyone to come after me.

Slowly, painfully, I turned around.

There was a black cat sitting on the sidewalk, watching me with a piercing gaze. I narrowed my eyes. "You'd better not be a twelve year old girl disguised as an animal," I said.

The cat blinked. My eyes narrowed further.

Then, casually, the cat hopped off, walking down the sidewalk away from me. I watched it until it had entirely disappeared from view, turning the corner around the far side of the building. I let out a breath, and continued toward the office.

Hopefully it was nothing.

Inside, the place was bustling with activity. The room was lively with chatter, and nobody paid me any attention as I went toward Erica's office. She was under her desk when I came in, almost entirely obscured from view, save for the very top of her hair: a braided bun, brown, poking out over the far edge of the desktop. Over in the corner was a taller man, overweight, with short, buzzed hair, working on an internet router.

I cleared my throat. "Hey," I said.

There was a bang, a hissed curse, and then Erica climbed up from under the desk, rubbing at the back of her head. "Taylor!" she said, putting on a smile, wincing a little. "Hey!"

"Are you alright?"

"Fine," she said. "Just fine. Do you have the article?"

I fished it from my bag and handed it over. "Already did a first editing pass on it. There shouldn't be any of the more obvious mistakes."

"Fantastic," she said, tucking it under her arm. "Thanks for coming in on such short notice. Really appreciate it."

"Don't worry about it," I said. "I can see things are hectic around here."

"Honestly, that's kind of an understatement," she said, laughing a little. She glanced over to the man in the corner of the room. "Hey, Brett, how long did you say you think it'll take to fix all this?"

"A week, if we're lucky," he said gruffly. "Longer than the heat death of the universe if we're not."

Erica shrugged. "There you have it. Heat death of the universe. Anyway, thanks again. There'll probably be another assignment for you next week—uh, I'll call you about it. Keep your phone on. Oh, and you'll probably have to come into the office in a few days to pick up your check."

I rubbed my eyes. "The payroll system's down, too?"

"Yep. Welcome back to the twentieth century, my friend," Erica said, chuckling. "Everything's got to be done by hand."

I didn't like it, being forced out of the house again when Kennet's capes were watching me, but I didn't really have a choice, did I? I needed the money. I could've asked them to mail it to me, but I didn't have many other prospects to keep myself afloat while I waited for the Canadian postal service to carry a piece of paper from one side of Kenent to the other.

I sighed. "Okay. Thanks for letting me know."

She waved me off, and I went back to my car. I was done here. All I had to do now was go back home before one of Kennet's capes freaked out on me.

But there, waiting beside the driver's side door, was a girl with dark hair, wearing a black cloak and a black witch's hat. This one didn't have a mask, but she was obviously a cape all the same.

Goddammit. Were all the capes here little girls?

"Before you ask," the girl said. "Yes, I was the cat from earlier."

My hand tightened into a fist. "I wasn't doing anything. I just work here. I told your friends already—I'm a writer. The paper's network is down, so I had to hand in my article in print form."

The girl nodded. "I was watching."

"Then why are you here now?"

"I wanted to talk."

"Why?" I snapped. "I haven't done anything. I've played ball, I've kept my head down. I've been really fucking calm, considering everything that's happened—because I have no idea what's going on! Your friend Lucy blew up my arm and just disappeared. What the hell am I supposed to think about that?"

"We were being careful," she said. "There's trouble in Kennet, and we're not sure who we can trust."

"Yeah, I know. Lucy told me that already. Then she just left me alone! What am I supposed to do if someone comes after me? I don't have my power, I don't have two arms."

"Well, that's kinda why I'm here," the girl said coolly. "I'm Verona."

I sucked in air. There was no point in introducing myself. "What do you want from me?"

"To explain some things, answer some questions you probably have. But first, I need you to answer a few questions of mine."

I narrowed my eyes. I was tired of answering questions. If anything, I was owed some questions of my own. "You want to ask me stuff here? We're not exactly alone, you know. There are a ton of people in the office today. Anyone could walk out and see you in your Halloween costume."

She didn't even have a mask.

Verona shook her head. "They won't be coming out here for a little bit." She gestured toward the door, where there had been a piece of paper taped to the outside surface, with a bunch of geometric designs drawn on it.

My heart skipped a beat. Did this girl just put a bomb on the front door? What would happen if someone tried to open it? "The last time someone drew one of those around me, it exploded," I hissed.

"This is different. Different circumstances, different connections being blocked. It won't blow up—well, so long as you don't touch it yourself. Now—what do you know about practice?"

I grit my teeth. "Only what you guys have told me. Avery told me that it's a name for powers in this world, and some of it's based on association."

Verona winced a little at that, and I wasn't sure why. "Okay. That's…" She shook her head. "Never mind. Okay, second question: what gave you your power? Like, what actually is it?"

"Don't you guys have them too?" They were capes, weren't they?

She shook her head. "Humor me, please?"

Fine. Maybe capes were new to this world, and the ones here didn't have the same framework of knowledge that I'd had back on Earth Bet. I'd been here for seven years, after all, and not once had I heard anyone mention superpowers. The chances that these underground capes would have the medical equipment to do research on themselves was slim to none. I could afford to throw them a bone or two, even if I was still pissed at them.

"I don't really know exactly what it is," I said. "I never got the full picture. But from what I've learned, it's a part of this… alien being called Scion, who was an incredibly powerful cape. It draws power from alternate universes, connects to me through a certain part of my brain. It gets more powerful when I'm in my element. I've heard it called a passenger. A parasite. Someone I met who was called, uh, the Faerie Queen? She called them faeries."

Verona frowned. "...The Faerie Queen?"

"A villain," I said, not bothering to elaborate further. There was a moment of silence as she took it all in.

"Okay," she said slowly, nodding along. "Okay, I think I'm starting to get it. I think Lucy was onto something… the language is a little bit different, but the core concepts are there. Capes, faeries. They're like… Practitioners, faeries themselves, or some kind of general set of Others, or… kind of like subgroups of them." She scratched her head. "You said there's a part of your brain that lets you control your power?"

"Yeah. On Earth Bet—the world I'm from—we called it a Corona Pollentia. It's a part of the brain that grows when we trigger. Lets us control our powers."

"Trigger," Verona mumbled under her breath. And then she raised an eyebrow. "Wait, 'we'? You weren't the only one with a… power?"

I shook my head. "No, there were plenty of people with powers. Thousands." Wasn't it the same here?

"Jeez," Verona mumbled softly. "Friggin'..." She shook her head. "Okay. Cool. I really appreciate you answering."

"Now could you please tell me what the hell is going on?"

"I can, but…" She bit her lip. "Does it ever speak to you? Your power? Does it communicate in any way?"

I swallowed. "No," I said, trying not to think of the nightmare I'd had last night, trying not to think of the spider on my nightstand. "Never."

She raised an eyebrow. "Are you sure?"

"It's never spoken to me before," I stressed. "I've tried communicating with it, and there's never been any real response."

"What about in your dreams?"

My heart sank into my stomach. How the fuck did she know about those? She couldn't read minds, could she? I shook my head quickly. "They're just dreams," I said. "That's all."

"Okaaaay," she said, biting her lip. "Great. Super." She didn't really look like she believed me, but she didn't belabor the point, either.

"Is that it?" I was looking forward to the end of this conversation already.

"Just one last question, okay?" She met my eyes. "How much danger are you willing to risk? Because this? Learning about this stuff? It could be one of the most dangerous things you could possibly do. And it makes us responsible for you. Not just metaphorically, but, like, metaphysically. What you do will reflect on us, affect us in ways you don't even understand yet. I need to know that you can handle that danger."

I opened my mouth to respond, and—

"It's not just risking death," Verona continued. "There are things worse than death that could happen to you. I mean, really bad stuff. The kind of stuff they put in horror movies, and worse. Nightmare fuel, sometimes literally."

Literally? What was that supposed to mean? And then, for a moment, I was struck with a thought: she was twelve—was she even supposed to be watching horror movies?

Then I shook my head. "I'm no stranger to that kind of thing," I said, thinking back to Grey Boy, the Butcher, Bonesaw. "I've faced plenty of those in my day. I've faced monsters, plagues, and world-ending threats more times than I can count, and I've always lived to tell the tale. I'm not afraid of them."

"Okay," she said. "If you're really sure." If you're really telling the truth was the part that went unsaid.

"I am." I stood up a little straighter. "Believe me, I've been there, and I can handle myself. But I need to know what's going on."

I needed to know if my power was trying to reconnect to me. I needed to know if it was succeeding. Because if it was… I had the feeling it would be Khepri coming back, not Weaver.

Not me.

"Okay," she repeated. "And… hey, we're really sorry about your arm, by the way," she said. "We've been talking about pooling some money together to help replace it. I don't know how much a prosthetic costs, exactly, but—"

I shook my head. "It's fine," I said, sighing. "You guys are kids. Don't worry about it." Where were they supposed to get the money from, anyway? Their parents? I didn't think four kids' worth of allowances would amount to much.

"Hey," Verona said, raising an eyebrow. "I wouldn't underestimate us just because we're young."

"I'm not," I said. "I get it. I got brought into this game way too early, too. I did a lot of bad things before I even knew I should regret them."

For a moment, Verona was silent. Then she nodded. "But if you're lucky," she said eventually, "there's a chance to make amends, or do better next time. So—this is us trying to do better." Then she stuck out a hand for me to shake. "We've all agreed. I'll try to explain things to you as best as I can, and in return, I hope you can try to trust us. There's just one condition."

I wasn't sure I liked the sound of that. "What is it?"

"If you hear us out, and you agree to stay in Kennet, you have to help us. Help protect the town to the best of your ability. And I mean you, not your power. Not Khepri or the Queen Administrator. You, Taylor Hebert, writer of newspaper and magazine articles. You have to promise."

Huh. That wasn't a distinction I'd been expecting. "I can leave if I want to?" I asked.

"Yeah. But, uh, if you're going to leave, I'd probably suggest you go sooner rather than later. Just to make things easier on all of us."

I looked her up and down, this twelve year old cape who carried far more authority than any kid should have.

"Why?" I asked, frowning.

"Why what?" Verona's hand wavered in place a little.

"Why now? You guys have been, I don't know, suspicious of me this whole time. I haven't done anything that would change that. So why now?"

"If I'm being honest, there are a ton of different factors. We'd be here for a while if I had to explain them all. Like, I'm still kind of terrified by your power, but I think it's better to have you in a position where you can work with us instead of around us. I think you can really help us out. But the most important thing, I think, is that I believe you're not here to do harm—or, not on purpose, anyway. You had the chance to do something to my dad, and you didn't."

Wait, what? My frown deepened. "Your dad?"

She shrugged, a bit of an unhappy look in her eyes. "The IT guy you ran into. Brett? That's my dad."

I blinked. Jesus. "You thought I might've been coming after your family," I said.

"I was a little bit concerned, yeah."

And she'd done nothing. It was her father, but she'd given me the benefit of the doubt, anyway. She'd just watched from a distance as I'd walked into an enclosed space with her father. Could I have made the same choice, if I'd been in her place? I didn't think so.

Besides, a chance at answers seemed worth putting some things aside.

My lips curled into a tiny smile, and I took the handshake. Her grip was firmer than I'd have expected from a girl her size. "Okay, I'm in."

Verona grinned. "Super. Welcome to Kennet," she said. "Let me tell you about magic."

 

[Dr Heaven M.D.]

She glanced over to the man in the corner of the room. "Hey, Brett, how long did you say you think it'll take to fix all this?"

"A week, if we're lucky," he said gruffly. "Longer than the heat death of the universe if we're not."

Click to shrink...

Ugh. This fucking guy.

And she'd done nothing. It was her father, but she'd given me the benefit of the doubt, anyway. She'd just watched from a distance as I'd walked into an enclosed space with her father. Could I have made the same choice, if I'd been in her place? I didn't think so.

Click to shrink...

Yeah, not that big of a risk. More like win/win.

 

[keighthundred]

I had to admit: I felt really awkward, being a twenty-five-year-old woman sitting in a circle with four twelve-year-old girls. I knew that rationally there was a very good reason I was here and that these weren't normal twelve-year-olds, but all I could think about was what people would say if they saw me. We were far enough away from the town proper that there wouldn't be anyone out here, but still. Fears were irrational, hell, people were irrational, and I really didn't want to get any concerned parents interested in what I might be doing.

But the risk was worth it if I finally got answers about what was going on.

There were four of them, and they were clearly a tight-knit group. Avery, Lucy, Verona, and Snowdrop; they chatted amongst themselves like close friends. It was in their words, their body language. They cared about each other. I felt a bit like an intruder, pushing my way into somewhere I didn't belong.

"Magic," I said, just to bring the conversation back to its point.

"Yeah, it's a lot to take in," Lucy said. "Imagine how me and Ronnie felt when we first got introduced to it. Took me days to really wrap my head around it. I mean…" She waggled her fingers. "Practice? Magic? Come on. But then we saw it with our own eyes."

I leaned in. "There was a cape back where I came from. He called himself Myrddin. He was convinced that his powers were magic, different from everybody else's. He made it his whole thing, called himself a wizard, had the robes and staff and all that. Everybody thought he was crazy, but…" I trailed off.

"I don't think we can comment on that either way," Avery said. "Not without seeing him first hand."

"He sounds really smart," Snowdrop added. "Extremely stable."

"He had a staff, and he was able to do a variety of different things with his power. I saw him draw symbols in the air that caused different effects, shoving people back, catching water. I mean… that sounds like your magic, right? Practice?"

"I think if he was a Practitioner," Verona said, "it was probably a really friggin' dumb idea to announce that he was a wizard to the world. I mean, innocence protects people. And when you tell someone about magic, you're responsible for them, for what happens to them and what they do. Telling the whole world about magic? Sounds like a fantastic way to obliterate your karma."

"And Karma is… important?"

The girls looked among each other, before they all turned to Lucy. "And we're going to have to stop here for a second. Before we get into deeper explanations, you're going to need to agree to something."

I frowned. More agreements. More questions. More things standing between me and what I needed to hear.

"It's not that we don't want to tell you—really—but we swore oaths not to reveal certain things to outsiders. We really can't break those oaths without facing some serious backlash. So if you want to get answers to everything, if you want to hear about magic, you can't be an outsider." She took a breath before continuing. "You're going to have to agree to become a part of this town. You've got to agree to protect it and defend it from outsiders. I'm offering this to you because I trust you. Because I believe your story—that you've been mostly innocent up until now, and that you don't have any agenda of your own when it comes to Kennet. But this isn't something to take lightly."

"If you want to back out now," Avery added, "this is your chance. After this, you're in this deep."

"No going back," Verona said.

"It's not a big deal," Snowdrop said.

I gave the last girl a side-eye as I inhaled. I could feel the weight these girls were putting behind what they were saying. It felt like…it really didn't feel like anything I'd experienced before. Joining the Undersiders had felt less serious than this. It was more like when I'd been recruited into the Protectorate, with the weight of the world behind me, a ticking clock on counting towards when it all ended.

Which was ridiculous, wasn't it? These were a handful of kids. Whatever was at stake, it probably wasn't world-threatening.

"You sound like you're recruiting me into a cult," I said with a nervous chuckle.

"You can say no," Avery said. "If you're having doubts, you really should say no."

"I was never good at backing out when I should," I said. "Maybe I should've learned my lesson by now, but…" It wasn't me. I wasn't the kind of person to run from danger. "No," I said. "I'm not backing out."

"Then promise," Lucy said, "Promise that you'll agree to protect Kennet. That you'll give your aid if we ask it of you, that you won't attempt to harm us, and that you won't reveal anything you learned here to outsiders."

"For how long?" I asked. "Are you saying I'll have to stay here for the rest of my life?"

The girls glanced at each other. "Let's say five years," Lucy said. "You agree to remain in Kennet for at least five years. And you have to mean it. Your words might not have much weight, but ours do."

"Does that mean you'll hunt me down if I renege on our deal?" I asked, injecting a little mirth into my tone.

"If that's what it takes," Lucy answered, dead serious. "If we don't, it'll screw us over pretty friggin' bad, because it'll mean that we broke our oaths to others. So I hope it doesn't come to that." She looked me in the eyes. "So, five years. You'd be allowed to leave the town temporarily, for shorter periods of time, but until those five years are up, you'll live in Kennet."

Five years. I wasn't sure if these kids were even on the level, but I needed answers. This was my first chance at anything like my old life and I needed to know. Besides, I wasn't planning on leaving anyway. I let out a breath and nodded. In for a penny. "I agree."

"No, you'll need to say the whole thing. We can't risk an agreement without weight behind it or something that could be misunderstood."

I put a hand over my heart. "I promise to protect Kennet. I'll help out when you ask, I won't do you any harm, I won't reveal any secrets you reveal to me here today, and I'll stay here providing help for at least five years."

At the last word the girls looked at each other, and all of them gave off the appearance that something had happened, but whatever it was, I couldn't see it. I felt like an idiot, sitting in the dirt and making promises to tweens.

"Alright," Lucy said. "We agree to those exact terms, staking our reputations as protectors of Kennet on them." She let out a breath. "Okay, I think that we're good. Where were we?"

"You were talking about Karma," I picked back up without a beat. "You were saying how it's important to some things?"

"Right, so karma isn't just important, it's fundamental. Seriously, you can't really do anything without running into karma. It affects everything you do, and I mean everything. People with bad karma tend to have it not only affect their practice, but it seeps into their everyday life. It changes how people view you, how badly things affect you. It can go all the way down to always burning your tongue whenever you drink coffee. Tripping over the root of a tree that everyone else steps over. Or your car failing you right when you needed it. When there's an imbalance, the universe itself jumps in to fix it."

Like pressure in a valve.

"So Myrddin wasn't really magical?" I asked.

"We can't be sure," Verona said. "It might have been magic—drawing runes to summon power lines up with what we do. Then again, maybe it was just something he did that just had similar aesthetics. We don't know one way or the other without seeing it first hand."

"Yeah," Lucy said, "It may have just been the way his power worked."

"A whole world of maybe-Harbingers," Avery said, frowning. "And they were superheroes? It just seems so crazy. How is that even possible?"

"If the Other is strong enough, it's theoretically doable," Verona said. "But it would have to be a really strong Other to do it. Remember Ted? Something with that much power could make a world, or worlds. Something on the level of a god. Maybe beyond that."

"You called it Khepri, didn't you?" Lucy asked me. "Khepri's an Egyptian god, right?"

"Technically, Khepri was me," I said. "I'd had someone modify my power, and it made me stronger in some ways, weaker in others, but it wasn't how my powers were supposed to work. She had to play with the corona, mess with my brain, to even attempt it. It wasn't pretty, a hack job, and at a certain point…" I looked away, staring over the ridge, watching the sun set over Kennet in the distance. "My power took over. So if you want to be technical about it, the name refers to both my power and who I was at the time."

"Not the Egyptian god, then," Lucy muttered. "And I've never heard of anything called Scion before. It feels like something that big should be noticed."

"Durocher might know something," Verona said.

"Maybe. Getting her help with this might be a little tricky, though. Especially with all of—" She waved her hands vaguely. "—this going on."

"And I still don't know what a Harbinger is," I said. "And to be honest, I'm still not sure if I entirely believe all of this is magic and not just really esoteric powers."

"We might be getting ahead of ourselves," Lucy said. "Sorry, the basics."

"Magic," I said again.

"Right," Lucy said, nodding. "At its most basic, Practice can be considered like bridging the gap between human and Other."

"Other?" I asked.

"To simplify things, basically consider it any supernatural being," Avery said. "Uh—spirits, faeries, goblins. That kind of thing." She patted Snowdrop on the head, smiling. "Like our favorite opossum here."

I frowned. Snowdrop wasn't human? She looked human, albeit a little strange. Her blonde hair drooped over her eyes, and today her shirt displayed a design of an opossum having a beer in front of a mobile home, with the words 'Upper Class Trailer Trash' encircling it.

She had a theme going for her, at least. If she wasn't human, what was she? Some kind of… opossum spirit? Was that a thing?

"I'm a perfectly normal girl," Snowdrop said. "Normal human girls love sleeping in trash."

Uh—

"Becoming a Practitioner means awakening." Lucy continued, ignoring her. "You give up your ability to lie, but it means your words have more weight."

Right, what she had been talking about before. I raised an eyebrow. "Weight with what?"

"The spirits," Verona said, "Basically the things that make up everything. They make up the trees around us, the dirt we're sitting on, your clothes, everything. They're always watching and always judging what you do. Becoming aware means you're able to interact with them and you're able to interact with Others, but you lose all the protections granted by being unaware. Being awakened means that when you speak, the spirits listen. Your words and actions impact the real world."

I thought of how serious they had been when talking about oaths, about keeping to my promises. "It seems like a lot of this is a give and take," I said.

"I guess it can be seen like that. Gaining power opens you up to others using their power against you. Knowing more means the things you know can leave you open to being sought out because of that. Again, this is really basic. Like, a full discussion on any one of these topics could be super, super long. Like, college-course long."

"And you do not wanna get Ronnie started on that," Lucy said with a smile.

Verona let out an overly dramatic mock gasp, before lightly pushing Lucy, who pushed her back. Both girls had smiles on their faces. The joke hadn't been taken poorly, like I'd worried it might be.

They really were just kids.

"Okay," I said. "I'm going to be honest—I'm still not sure if I believe all this, but go on. Why can't you lie?"

"It takes away power and hurts your karma," Avery said, "Every lie you make takes power away from you, and breaking an oath is enough to have you stripped of all your magical power. And it doesn't matter if it was accidental or not. The spirits don't care either way. If you lie, you take a hit to your karma, and things don't go your way for a while. If you break an oath? You're forsworn, you lose access to most practice, and your karma is ruined pretty much forever."

"And that can happen?"

"We've met somebody who had it happen to them."

That explained why they seemed so serious about holding me to what I said. That at least lent some credence to what they were saying. Powers could do varied things. I'd never met parahumans from another world, the only time I had was…well, I couldn't be sure exactly how powers could differ in that regard. But the one constant was that powers didn't just go away. They needed to be used. A power wouldn't just lock itself away permanently. Not unless someone else did it.

I scratched my head. "Okay. So being a Practitioner, having your words have weight—what does that actually mean? How does that help?"

"It means you can work with Others," Lucy said. "Draw on their strengths, make deals. Or you can manipulate things to your advantage. You've heard us say that labels have power? They have extra power when you're a Practitioner. When we draw diagrams, they have meaning. If I draw something that represents fire, it can actually become fire."

"Like the thing you used to blow up my arm," I said, raising an eyebrow.

She sheepishly averted her gaze. "Uh—sort of. Sorry about that."

"It's fine," I said, even though it kind of wasn't. "You called it a connection blocker before?"

"That's what it was supposed to do—block a connection between two things. It works in the abstract a lot of the time, so we usually use them to keep attention away from us. As long as the blocker's up, our parents are less likely to call us, people are less likely to pay us attention—that kind of thing. But there's a limit to how effective they are, and when they break, there's backlash."

I hesitated. "You're saying…" My passenger was still active? Still looking for me? I shook my head. "Tell me I'm misinterpreting this."

"Your patron is still watching you. The connection blocker wouldn't have failed if it wasn't."

"And with the force behind the backlash, whatever it was doing pushed back hard," Avery said.

"Like trying to use a coffee filter to block a fire hose," Verona added.

It felt like the entire world was focused directly onto the ground in front of me. I should be reacting, but I felt so disconnected. Like trying to block a fire hose. Watching me.

It was still attached.

I forced myself through the breath exercises a therapist had taught me what felt like decades ago, when I had first moved here. Focusing on breathing. Focusing on myself. I rubbed my fingers against the dirt, trying to force my attention back to the present, back to reality. Four sets of eyes watched me. I realized my hands were shaking.

"It can't," I spat. "If it reconnects to me, if it comes back—"

That figure at the end of the world; the me that wasn't me; the wounded animal, lashing out. Khepri.

"How bad?" Avery asked quietly.

"Catastrophic," I said. "Maybe. I don't know. It would be bad for me. Really bad. But what made Khepri a threat seven years ago was all of the other capes that were nearby."

"It increased your strength, having others with powers around you?"

"Wait." Suddenly, Lucy's eyes widened. "You said Khepri's domain was control? Controlling bugs, controlling situations?"

"Yeah," I said. My mouth felt dry. I couldn't bring myself to continue.

So Lucy filled in the final blank for me. "Capes," she said. "People."

"...Yeah."

She nodded slowly, almost cautiously. "How thorough was it? Your control?"

I swallowed. "It was more body control than mind control, but… it was absolute. There wasn't any resisting it. And I could use their powers. There wasn't any limit to the number of people I could take, either. When my power was modified, it shortened my range down to just sixteen feet, but it didn't matter, because I had access to a cape that could generate portals. It let me stretch my range indefinitely, and… everyone around me became a force multiplier. So at the upper end, I had thousands of capes under my control, thousands of powers with pinpoint precision. I went toe-to-toe with Scion himself." I looked up at them, at their concerned expressions. "There aren't any capes here, in this world."

"But there are Others," Verona said. "Spirits, gods, bogeymen. Powers, after a fashion. And if the nature of your connection changes… maybe your power would too. And if your power can control Others…"

"I really hope it can't," I said. I let out a mirthless little laugh. "I know my words don't have the same weight as yours, but I swear on everything that matters: I really, really don't want my power to come back."

"And if it does?"

I was quiet for a very long time. "You would need to stop me. By any means necessary." I took a breath. "I wasn't very powerful until I had a certain number of capes under my thrall. A bullet would've taken me out, I think. If you do it early on enough, before I reach critical mass, it would work."

"You want us to kill you?" Lucy asked.

I shook my head. "It wouldn't be me. It'd be my passenger, my power. Not me. And powers… they seek out conflict. They're designed to be used. Part of some… big experiment, or something. Parts of a whole, fragments of Scion." I took a breath. "It'd lash out, hurt people. And I wouldn't be able to stop it."

I'd already be long gone.

I waited for the moment they told me they'd stop it before it came to that. That they'd make sure it wouldn't happen to me and they'd rescue me if it did.

They didn't say anything. The four of them looked among each other, none talking.

Ah. That's right. They couldn't lie.

My hand gripped my jeans, rubbing dirt into the fabric. My voice sounded too calm as I started speaking again. "If…if it comes to that. We don't know what's going to happen."

"It's just a theory," Avery said, nodding.

"Right," Verona said. "We don't know for sure what would happen if your power reconnected itself. Who's to say it wouldn't reestablish itself in its original form?"

"It wouldn't," I said before I could stop myself. The dread gathered like a storm in my gut, churning, boiling. My breath tasted like bile. "Something like that doesn't get fixed. They told me and I still went through with it. When I lost control, when I started lashing out, they had no choice but to take me down. I'd lost all connection with my humanity. I couldn't even understand language anymore—not even body language. I was a raving monster, and so they had to shoot me, sever the connection between it and me. The only other choice was...They didn't undo what I'd done to my power, didn't fix or heal it—they couldn't. So it's still there, exactly like it was at the end, just… detached."

The silence hung in the air like a visceral weight over our shoulders. The girls all stared at me, probably wondering when this ticking time bomb of an ex-superhero would go off. How much time did I have left? I'd spent seven years on this Earth, and I'd had dreams, but nothing beyond that. Nothing like this.

I'd already made my promises. If they changed their mind, there was no running away, unless I was willing to throw these kids under the bus. And I didn't think I was, but… if I got desperate enough, I wasn't sure that my oath wouldn't buckle under pressure.

And then, suddenly, Snowdrop turned into an opossum right before my eyes, hopping over to me, skipping through the grass. She crawled onto my lap, and I froze. What was she doing? What was I supposed to do?

"Uh—"

"Pet her," Avery supplied.

Are you kidding? I didn't move a muscle, staring down the opossum like she was about to bite me.

"She likes being petted. Really." Avery gave an encouraging smile. "We can't lie, remember?"

They can't lie, I told myself. They can't lie.

God, I really hoped they'd been telling the truth. Cautiously, I pet the opossum, applying the lightest possible pressure against her fur. I really didn't want to have to get a rabies shot. When she didn't react negatively, I continued petting her, and eventually, she curled up in my lap with a sleepy yawn.

Huh.

"See?" Avery asked.

"Yeah," I said. For a scraggly opossum, she was a lot softer than I'd expected. And I could breathe again.

"We can't guarantee anything," Verona said, "but we'll try to help you out with your thing, keep Khepri at bay. We're here to protect Kennet and the people in it. Now that you've promised, that includes you too. There are resources we can reach out to that might be able to help with your problem."

I let out a few breaths, Snowdrop helping me clear my head. It gave me time to focus, to think. And I realized something.

This entire conversation we'd been stepping around the point. These girls were obviously spooked and were working towards something they hadn't been willing to share with me before.

I leaned in. "You keep saying that, protect Kennet. Right now, what are you trying to protect Kennet from?"

The girls gave each other conspiratorial glances. I wasn't sure what that meant, and I didn't think I was going to like the answer.

"There was a murder, a little while ago," Lucy said. "Someone killed a…let's call them an important player in the region. Someone big enough and strong enough that when they died it caused waves. Metaphorical and metaphysical."

"It was why we were awakened," Verona added. "The Others of Kennet needed someone to investigate so that other parties wouldn't push themselves in. They thought we would be the best because of how inexperienced we were."

A frown started to etch itself on my face. Girls this young being pushed into dangerous situations at the behest of what were essentially monsters, brought in because they'd known they wouldn't be able to do as much as someone who was better trained or more knowledgeable. They'd picked out kids that wouldn't be able to protect themselves. The fact that these girls had made it this far and hadn't obviously gotten hurt spoke only to some natural skill, and a whole lot of luck.

It painted a very dark picture, and I really didn't like it. What rankled even more was that there wasn't anything I could do to change that.

"Things still haven't been resolved with that, and we were away for a while," Lucy continued. "So now there's new Others in town, new things going on, and new evidence has started turning up in strange ways."

"Nothing feels like it's ever a coincidence with magic," Avery said. "So, it probably means all of that is going to escalate until it finally blows up."

"I know what that feels like," I muttered. "Alright, how do I play into this? Are you going to, uh, 'awaken' me or whatever?"

"No," Lucy said. "That probably wouldn't be a good idea with your power trying to reach out to you. Even though you know about magic now, you still have some protections just by being a mostly normal human. Awakening you would give you more avenues to fight back, but it'd also give your power more avenues to reach you, and it'd probably do more for the latter than the former. I don't think it'd be worth the cost."

"Fine," I said, shrugging. "I like being able to lie, anyway."

Lucy nodded. "There are options," she said. "If you want, you can just do the basics, help keep the perimeter in check. We'll show you how to do upkeep, and that's all you'll have to do. It should be safe, it's somewhat simple, and would help free up others for the more involved options."

"Or?" I prompted.

"If you're willing, we want you to get in contact with some of the local Others."

What? What was the goal here? "Just… talk to them? Why?"

"Because we've had our hands tied in a lot of ways. There are rules, oaths, and they make it difficult to work. For one thing, we're not allowed to bring any Others or practitioners into town without the consensus of our local Others—and when some of the Others here have ulterior motives, you can probably guess it gets really screwy."

"But you invited me?" I asked. "And I get the impression you didn't consult with anyone about me."

Lucy's lips curled into a small grin. "You're not a practitioner or an Other. You're a new face with no history in this town—plus, you're an adult who can go places we can't, without a lot of questions getting asked. We can't promise it'll be safe, but if you meet with some people for us, force a reaction, you might shuffle things up enough to give us an advantage in things. For whoever is behind all of this to show their hand."

People, she'd said. But I could hear the part she wasn't saying. Suspects.

Whatever. I'd help them even if it was dangerous. Sure, they had magic, and they seemed confident enough, but they were kids. They were younger than I'd been when I'd first started. I wasn't going to leave them in the cold when I had the training and experience to help.

But there was one sticking point: something I needed from them that I couldn't ask from anybody else. I gently set Snowdrop on the ground beside me, and looked the other kids in the eyes.

"I'm sorry to bring this up again. I'm sorry that I'm asking you this, but I need to hear you say it. What will you do if my power finds its way back to me?" I asked. "What will you do if I lose control, if Khepri emerges—if I become a threat to your town, to everyone?"

These kids were the only ones in a position to take me out if it became necessary. Nobody else in this world knew about powers, besides my dad—and there was no way in hell I was asking my dad to kill me. He'd suffered enough already.

Verona met my eyes with a steely gaze. "We'll deal with it," she said. The other girls didn't speak, but nodded in assent.

I nodded, a short jerk of my head, more difficult than it should have been. "That's all I needed to hear. Yeah, I'll do it."

"I'm glad to hear it," said a voice from behind me.

I jerked around at the sound. A woman stood near the treeline, her face partially obscured by one of the branches. I swung back around to see the girls relax at her presence. Snowdrop had woken up, climbing onto Avery's shoulder, but hadn't reacted beyond that.

Not a threat, then. Someone they knew? She moved forward a little bit, but with the glare of the sun and the shadows of the trees it was still impossible to make out her face.

"I believe I'll take over from here, girls," the woman said.

 

[Iceflame55]

Honestly, Queen Administrator might not be a Bad Thing. While the Others sound like alot of supernatural types, that runs a wide range of Good/Bad. And if Queenie was taught by the Others how to act better, She might be just what is needed.

And how much Karma would saving multidimensional existence be worth in terms of Taylor having a decent life?

 

[ImperatorV]

Hi, huge Pale fan here, I'm glad more people are paying attention to Pale (it's legitimately one of the best stories I've ever read and does not have enough readers). You do a good job of writing the main trio, and Snowdrop is wonderful as always (and I find it intensely amusing that no one has actually explained her deal to Taylor yet).

Anyway, I'm curious to see how Taylor's presence effects things. I don't think she can do anything about the Carmine Conspiracy, she's too new at this and a certain exhibitionist faerie is too skilled. But Taylor Hebert is excellent at being a spanner in the works, and I'm expecting her to seriously muck up at least one of the major villains out of nowhere.

Interestingly, Miss is back, which means we're very close to the summer endgame - I forgot exactly when she returned but it IIRC it was fairly late.

 

[Reymen]

What is Pale? Is it a book or web novell? Where can I find it?

 

[ImperatorV]

What is Pale? Is it a book or web novell? Where can I find it?

Click to shrink...

Web Novel, link to the prologue here.

Two notes: The story is very long (over two and a half million words now IIRC), so be prepared for that. And for the first half or so of the story the author posts something called "extra materials" every two~ish chapters, these can be found in links at the top of the main chapters. The extra materials can be anything from the in-universe notes of characters, to artwork, to worldbuilding and lore, to short comics of events in the story. They're pretty fun and add a lot of depth to the story, to this day I'm not sure why you have to follow the separate links for them instead of automatically going to them when you hit "next chapter".

 

[ShaperV]

Hi, huge Pale fan here, I'm glad more people are paying attention to Pale (it's legitimately one of the best stories I've ever read and does not have enough readers). You do a good job of writing the main trio, and Snowdrop is wonderful as always (and I find it intensely amusing that no one has actually explained her deal to Taylor yet).

Click to shrink...

I think Wildbow managed to drive off a lot of fans with the relentless grimdark escalation of Pact, Twig and Ward. I'll admit I gave up about halfway through Pact, with only brief looks at the other two.

I'm curious whether Pale is any different, or if it just turns into endless character torture like all his other work. The setting has a lot going for it, but I don't think I could take two million words of a trio of well-meaning twelve year olds going through the kind of hell Wildbow likes to visit on his characters.

 

[keighthundred]

I think Wildbow managed to drive off a lot of fans with the relentless grimdark escalation of Pact, Twig and Ward. I'll admit I gave up about halfway through Pact, with only brief looks at the other two.

I'm curious whether Pale is any different, or if it just turns into endless character torture like all his other work. The setting has a lot going for it, but I don't think I could take two million words of a trio of well-meaning twelve year olds going through the kind of hell Wildbow likes to visit on his characters.

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Oh I definitely recommend Pale. It's much lighter in tone than the rest of his serials, and in my opinion, it's the best story he's written so far.

 

[Signupname]

UGH...Cliffhanger...Whyyyyyy

 

[Cookiesndip]

Honestly, Queen Administrator might not be a Bad Thing. While the Others sound like alot of supernatural types, that runs a wide range of Good/Bad. And if Queenie was taught by the Others how to act better, She might be just what is needed.

And how much Karma would saving multidimensional existence be worth in terms of Taylor having a decent life?

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This. Honestly, even without chatting with the Others, merely the improper merge with Taylor went both ways. Even in the worst throes of madness, Taylor stuck to the objective, and while she didn't recognize her friends, she didn't become omnicidal or anything.

Anyways, in my interpretation, that day Taylor lost a bit of her humanity and gained a bit of shardiness, and vice versa for QA. Hence, with 7 years of stewing, QA may be able to understand Taylor significantly better. Plus, Khepri wasn't really her fault, it was the jailbreaking that damaged both parties and forcefully smashed them together. A reconnection isn't likely to cause Khepri 2.0.

 

[Young Pyromancer]

This. Honestly, even without chatting with the Others, merely the improper merge with Taylor went both ways. Even in the worst throes of madness, Taylor stuck to the objective, and while she didn't recognize her friends, she didn't become omnicidal or anything.

Anyways, in my interpretation, that day Taylor lost a bit of her humanity and gained a bit of shardiness, and vice versa for QA. Hence, with 7 years of stewing, QA may be able to understand Taylor significantly better. Plus, Khepri wasn't really her fault, it was the jailbreaking that damaged both parties and forcefully smashed them together. A reconnection isn't likely to cause Khepri 2.0.

Click to shrink...

Except this is pact, and it's already been foreshadowed.

 

[keighthundred]

I had five minutes left to kill, but every attempt I made at writing came back dry and empty.

"They seem like good people."

I tapped my fingers against my laptop, scanning over the last few pages of work. It was sloppy, rushed and far too plain. My meeting with the Undersiders had been more important than that, hadn't it? More momentous? It had meant so much when it happened, my entire life had changed. How was I supposed to write anything to describe that feeling? Like taking a plunge into ice water, jumping off a building with your eyes closed so you don't see how large the gap or far away the street below is.

Could it really all be summed up in five words?

"Fuck it," I said, shutting my laptop, reaching for my mug.

My phone rang right as I began sipping the tea. I startled, splashing hot water all over me. "Shit," I muttered, fumbling the mug down on the kitchen counter, and grasping for my phone. The screen displayed the three most ominous letters in the english language:

Dad.

I sighed, raised the phone to my ear, and hit the answer button. "Hey, dad," I said, gingerly trying to avoid touching the burn on my lips.

"Hey, kiddo. Uh, are you alright?"

"Yep. Just—" I winced. "Just burned my tongue. It's nothing. What's up?"

"Well, I just wanted to check in, ask how Kennet's treating you. It's been a while since you called."

I'd been meaning to get in touch, but so much had happened with the move, and now all this. I'd wanted to call. I had. It had just… slipped my mind. It had only been a few weeks, anyway, and I'd been so busy with work that I hadn't had the time.

That was all.

"Honestly?" I rapped my fingers against the side of the phone. "It's great," I said, injecting some false cheer into my voice. "I've been a lot more productive, and I've been meeting a lot of new people."

"That's good. When you say meeting new people—"

"Just friends and coworkers," I said quickly. "Anyway, how are things with you and…" Who was he dating again? "...Colleen?"

"Good. Great, actually. That's actually part of the reason I'm calling."

My heart skipped a beat. "Oh."

"I realize you just got to Kennet, but it'd mean a lot to me if you met her. We've been together for a few months now, and it's starting to get… serious. So, this doesn't have to be a big thing, but my birthday's coming up in a few weeks, so I thought maybe it'd be a convenient time. And afterwards, we could do a thing with just the two of us."

"I…I can't," I said. "I've got obligations here—some new things that came with my job. It's important."

"...Okay," he said. It was obvious he didn't believe me. "That's fine."

"I'm really sorry. I would if I could," I said. "Honest. I'd love to go. It's just not a good time for me. I've got half a dozen new contracts, and—"

A knock on glass caught my attention. Someone had thrown a rock at my kitchen window. I couldn't see anyone out there, but then a second rock hit the glass, and I stood. I had to get over there before they started breaking things.

"Shit," I muttered. "Uh, sorry. I have to go. Someone's at the door." I pulled the phone closer to my ear. "But… Dad, I just need a little time to settle in. Ask me again in—" I glanced at the window. "—a month? Things should be more steady by then. Okay? I'll come down and the three of us can go to that bar you love."

"...Alright, Taylor. Love you."

"Love you, Dad. And… I'm happy for you," I said, pushing down the bitter taste in my mouth as I hung up. After the end of it all, we'd promised each other: no secrets. At the time, it was an easy vow to make, especially when he was the only one on this Earth I could confide in. So for a while, I'd kept it, keeping him up-to-date with everything that was going on in my life, coming to him when I had problems.

Somewhere along the line, I guess that had changed.

Whatever. It was something to deal with later. I dropped my phone on the counter and went to the window—but there didn't seem to be anyone there. Frowning, I slid it open, leaned out, and saw a tiny red-skinned figure with a perpetual grimace, maybe a girl, but tiny, just below the window.

"Aaa!" she screamed.

I jumped, almost banging my head against the frame, my heart racing. I instinctively reached for a weapon that wasn't there, using an arm I didn't have.

Jesus, what the fuck?

I bit down, taking a few deep breaths, and leaned back out the window. "Uh, hey," I said. "Sorry if I scared you there."

"I'm not scared?" the red girl said, her face twisting in something I guessed was confusion.

"Then… why did you yell?"

"Snowdrop told me you'd like it. Duh."

"Right," I said, sighing. "Of course." I really didn't understand that girl. Sometimes she made sense, and other times… "She sent you here to get me?"

She nodded vigorously. "Mhm! I get cool rocks if I bring you to Matthew."

"Cool rocks." I rubbed my eyes. "Sure."

After my meeting with Miss, the girls had texted me a rundown on the basic types of Others I'd run into in Kennet: faeries, goblins, dogs of war, mares, and a whole bunch more that I'd struggled to memorize over the last two days. This girl didn't exactly meet the conventional definition of a fantasy goblin, but judging by her level of intelligence, there weren't many other things she could be. If she was a magical creature.

But if I was being honest with myself, I still wasn't sure if I believed practice was real or not. Everything I'd seen so far could be explained by more esoteric powers, or the fact that powers didn't necessarily have to express themselves in the same way across worlds. Maybe this was just how passengers functioned on this Earth. And maybe this girl here was just a monstrous cape, albeit a bit childish.

Maybe, maybe, maybe. There were still way too many maybes—but that was why I was here, after all: to clear those questions up.

"Alright," I said. "I'll meet you out front."

The girl ran off, hollering the whole time. I sighed again.

She was here to take me to Matthew, and Matthew was… I thought back. A former practitioner, turned host. Apparently enough exposure to certain kinds of practice could make someone stop qualifying as human, which was disconcerting.

On the way out, I grabbed a bag I'd prepared a day earlier. Just the essentials in case it ever came down to a fight: an old relic from my past, and a handful of items that had been given to me during my meeting with Miss.

🟂​

The woman with no face stood stoically, masked by foliage, pointing into the long grass. Frowning, I leaned over, reached in, and pulled out two accessories, hidden in the muck: a dirty trucker's cap that looked like it was more stains than dye, and a pair of cheap sunglasses.

"What is this?" I asked.

"A gift."

I turned the hat over. From what I could tell, it looked to be entirely ordinary.

"I've given gifts to each of my chosen, to assist them in their trials," Miss said. "It will be no different for you."

I narrowed my eyes. "What do you mean by that?"

Because I really didn't like the implication that she'd picked me out, chosen me like she'd chosen the girls.

"I meant what I said." She gestured toward the hat. "This, like many things in our world, has been Lost to time, forgotten. When you wear this, it will lend some of its properties to you. It will become more difficult for people to perceive you," she said. "It will not make you invisible; it will not prevent people from noticing you, especially if they already know you or are searching for you, but you will disappear from unaware observers' peripheral visions. You won't stand out."

Okay. That sounded pretty damn useful, if she was telling the truth; if magic was real. I raised the hat to my head, and—

"Wait," she said, and I froze. "Be very careful with this. It works by loosening connections, shrouding itself from the outside world. Use it sparingly, but keep it close to you. It is Lost. Left to its own devices, it will be lost again."

I frowned. So it was useless to me. "Last time someone tried to block one of my connections, it exploded. Completely destroyed my arm."

"It did. What Lucy drew for you was a simple connection blocker—weak, fragile, temporary. This will not be. It will be strong enough to keep you hidden from indirect view, even from your patron."

No way. This ugly hat could keep my passenger at bay? Just like that? I didn't know if I believed in practice, but at that moment, I really, really wanted to.

"But," Miss said, "that carries its own cost, too. You are not a Practitioner or an Other. You do not have the same presence of Self that others would. If you wear this for too long, you risk becoming Lost yourself. You would cease to be."

Of course. Everything had its cost. "How long is too long?"

"That," she said, "depends on the strength of your presence."

"What does that mean?"

"You are unawakened," Miss said. "On top of that, you have very few connections in this world. And because of that, your presence in the spiritual realm is weak, untethered, tiny. You risk being pulled away."

"So I need to, what? Anchor myself?" I'd done that before, hadn't I? Or… I'd tried, at least.

"Weigh yourself down. Make yourself larger, unshakable, unforgettable. The opposite of what the hat represents."

"You're saying I need to make a splash," I said. "Put on a show."

Miss hummed. "In a sense. The spirits do like a good story, even from someone considered unimportant. The other method to maintain your presence is to maintain your Self: drawing upon your identity and your past. Embody everything that you are and once were, in all its different forms."

"How?"

"Take actions that are distinctly you. Or use symbols: items or tokens that strongly represent you or your past. If you have any of those, carrying or wielding them would help counteract the effects of the hat."

I did have something like that. My fingers tightened around the cap, nails digging into the rough fabric.

"You already know I have one of those, don't you?" I asked, scowling. "You know what it means to me."

She only shrugged. "It is your choice what methods you choose," she said. "Do what it takes to keep yourself in one piece, for the good of the town, the girls, and yourself."

"It was a long time ago," I said. "I was a different person then. More vicious, less willing to make compromises. If you're saying I have to represent myself with things, that's what I'd be presenting. It's not me."

"And yet," she said, "it was the first thing you thought of when I mentioned symbolic items."

Fuck her, I thought, gripping the hat even tighter. "Fine. And the sunglasses?"

"The sunglasses match the outfit."

I blinked.

Was that a joke? Was Miss fucking with me after all? I wanted to laugh, but couldn't. "Are you going to give me a fake mustache next?"

"No," she said, dead serious. "I couldn't find any of those."

I narrowed my eyes, trying to decipher her tone.

But before I could say anything in response, Miss crossed her arms, hands remaining hidden the entire time. "I expect you'll find a way forward, Taylor. I may not know much about your past, but I see you have a particular talent for making waves. You've already changed more than you know just by being here. I am very much looking forward to seeing what you'll accomplish in Kennet."

There was something oddly foreboding in the way that she said that, like there was a piece of context I was missing that would end up biting me in the ass.

"I wish I could say the same," I said.

🟂​

I met the little goblin out front, locked the door behind me, and stowed the key in my bag. She was looking at me funny, her twisted mouth gaping.

"What?" I asked.

"Where's your other arm?"

I rolled my eyes. "I lost it in a bet."

"Wow," she said, wonder in her tone. "You're sooooo dumb! Who would bet their arm?"

"Me, I guess."

"Stupid! You're the dumbest loser I've ever seen!" What threw me off was that she looked excited—like she wasn't trying to insult me, and legitimately thought it was cool that I was the least intelligent person she'd ever met.

"...Thanks?"

"Why would you do that? Everybody needs two arms! For eating and jerking o—"

"Oookay," I said quickly, cutting her off. I cleared my throat. "How about you take me to Matthew now?"

She nodded spiritedly. "Try not to get lost while you're following me, okay, stupid?" And with that, she ran off down the path. She was fast. So, left without any other options, I sprinted after her. At least I'd get my cardio in today, I thought.

The whole trip over, I was wondering, Why Matthew? What was I supposed to gain from this? Was this a warning? A trap? He was supposedly a leader in this town, friendly, and mostly trustworthy. He was unlikely to be one of the conspirators, they'd told me, and yet…

If any of the girls had picked him out, I wouldn't have questioned it—but it had been Miss who'd suggested him to be my first visit, and I didn't trust Miss, that woman with no face. I trusted the girls to a point, but Miss? I couldn't. Even if the girls placed their trust in her, and saw her as something of a mentor, I couldn't get over the fact that she'd intentionally picked vulnerable children to be her champions.

And I couldn't get over the thing she'd told me in confidence: that she'd picked me, too. That she'd heard about me, vetted me through Others I hadn't even met yet, and then pushed the girls toward recruiting me. What the hell was I supposed to take away from that?

The kinds of people that ran schemes like that, planning machinations within machinations—I'd learned long ago that they made for the most dangerous kind of enemy. Miss was someone I'd have to keep an eye on, if I didn't want to get stabbed in the back.

I was looking for three suspects. The number three carried weight, apparently—according to Verona's texts, threes made things stronger. It was why the girls had been picked as a trio, if you didn't count Snowdrop, who apparently wasn't even human. Miss could easily be one of the three conspirators. She was devious enough for it.

I was pulled out of my thoughts by a sound I hadn't heard in almost a decade: Piercing, frightened screams. Pure terror, given form. I stopped, catching my breath, gazing off toward the source of the disturbance. The goblin girl ahead of me stopped too, flashing a frightened glance toward whatever was happening nearby.

Fuck. Just my luck.

We were halfway down a side road, and to my right was a small three-story apartment complex, warping and snapping like it was going through an earthquake. Reverberations ran up and down its walls, railings snapped, and rivets popped like grapes. And like a snake swallowing its prey whole, it seemed that whatever was causing this was engulfing the building from the bottom up, shadows licking hungrily at the concrete foundation.

There was a police car parked in the lot, but it was ominously silent, and no officers were anywhere to be seen.

And I found myself clenching my fist, asking, fucking why? It was just a squat, little building in a residential zone. It was full of innocent people. Families. If a villain—a monster, I corrected—were searching for a target, why this place? Why here? Was this a tool of the conspirators? A weapon, designed to clean up evidence? Because if so, it was messy and conspicuous as all hell.

"What the hell is that?" I asked the goblin.

"Dunno!" she sputtered. "I'm gonna go—"

I grabbed her arm, easily holding her back. She was a tiny person, so small that her arm was only a little bigger than a human finger—and she had the strength to match, it seemed. She wouldn't be any help in the coming fight. "Wait," I said. "How far are we from Matthew?"

The girl's face screwed up. "Uh…"

I shook my head. "How long would it take you to get to him?"

"Not very?"

"Okay. Look, I'm going in there. I need you to go to Matthew, tell him what's going on, and to bring backup. Do that, and…" I wracked my brain. "Do that, and I'll give you some cool rocks. Shiny ones."

The girl's eyes jumped at that. "Okay!" she yipped, and I let her go. "Good luck, moron!" She ran off immediately, hopefully toward Matthew, and not just leaving me behind to die.

The screams continued to ring out, and I bit my lip. I had to go in there. People were in danger, and there was potentially evidence that would be destroyed if I stayed my hand. I didn't really have a choice, in the end.

I reached into my bag and retrieved the relic from my past: a taser; white and green stripes running down the sides. A PRT standard issue weapon, enhanced to help subdue weaker capes and non-parahumans.

It was the only surviving piece of equipment from my time as Weaver; the only keepsake from my past that had made it past Gold Morning. Even my costume had been lost at some point, or destroyed—I didn't know. I hadn't bothered asking Contessa—I'd had bigger things on my mind then. But my taser had somehow survived through sheer, dumb luck. One of the only remnants I had of my old life, and it had only come through Gold Morning because it had been forgotten inside a bag I'd left at my dad's house, and he'd grabbed it while evacuating during the first days of the battle.

I'd kept it with me all this time, even though it was a reminder of everything I'd lost, and everything I would never be again. I just couldn't make myself get rid of it. So if Miss wanted me to use a symbol of myself, this was the best I was going to get: a tool from my time as a superhero.

I checked the charge—still good—and put on Miss's hat. I didn't know what I'd been expecting from it, but I'd thought there would be something. Some kind of physical effect or feeling like I was blending in. But there was nothing. I felt like an idiot, wearing this dirty trucker's cap like it was a form of protection. I felt even dumber putting on the sunglasses, but I couldn't be sure if there was some hidden effect from wearing both parts of the set, so they went over my regular glasses.

Nothing.

"Goddamn it," I muttered under my breath, and headed toward the apartment.

It took twice as long as I'd expected just to reach the front door, as if the path itself had extended as I was walking through it. I was reminded of Vista's power, how space folded in unintuitive ways, except here, it almost seemed passive; incidental. It wasn't reacting to me so much as it was just a part of the space.

Which was worrying. There was something to Practice about repetition and rules, and if the world itself seemed to think the space-bending effect was natural, it meant it would be more permanent, didn't it? More difficult to contest?

More difficult to undo.

The front door wouldn't open. I pushed harder, tugging on the handle to no avail. Under closer examination, it seemed like the door itself was melted into the wall. There was no gap between it and the door frame.

Damn it.

I smashed a window with the back of my taser, which thankfully worked, and carefully avoided shards of glass as I pushed into the lobby, engulfing myself in shadows and screams. At my side, my fingers wrapped tighter around my weapon.

"Stay in your apartments!" someone shouted.

A police officer was nervously moving down the hall, gun in his hand, trained directly forward toward something that looked like a mass of shifting black, as big as a car. I couldn't make sense of what I was looking at; the longer I stared, the less form it seemed to have. I could see four legs and pieces of debris stuck to it, but that was it. Everything else was a shapeless void.

What the fuck?

The cop seemed to not have heard me smashing the window—either there was too much noise for him to hear, or maybe the stupid hat actually worked. He aimed at the mass of black, and—

It leapt at him. It moved so fast it threw him aside, slamming him against the wall. He didn't get back up.

The monster continued its trajectory toward me, and I tensed, raising the taser. But it veered off to the left, seemingly ignoring me, and disappeared up a flight of stairs. The hat's influence? Or maybe it was after something else? Maybe it had just attacked the cop because he was in its way?

I ran over to the downed officer and checked his pulse. Still alive. Okay.

I had to follow the beast. If it was trying to dispose of evidence, I had to get to it before the monster did. And it had gone upstairs, so I followed. The screams grew louder as I ascended, people rattling the handles of their doors. I tried to help, but most of the doors I tested were the same as the front door: stuck, impenetrable, and technically no longer doors. Whatever this was, it probably wouldn't go away until the monster was dealt with.

I prowled the halls, searching. Every turn brought another anxious moment, spent wondering if I was walking straight into a trap, if I was about to be ambushed by the twisting darkness. I hadn't felt so focused in years. Muscle memory that had faded into almost nothing came back to me as I crept around the halls. It took me about five minutes to find the beast, and when I did, it was almost accidental.

There it was—the shadow monster, just ten feet away, waiting in the corner of the hallway, watching something. The walls seemed to be cracking, the lines slowly stretching out in a spiderweb pattern. Paint and wood crumbled apart like flecks of styrofoam, deteriorating into a black, deathly shade. Each breath the monster took seemed to reverberate out, causing more damage and sending the cracks further and deeper into the building, aging the whole place to dust from the inside-out.

Then a flash of light blinked from the other end of the corner that I couldn't see. A gunshot, but completely silent. Not a tiny sound like a suppressed gun from a movie, but completely inaudible. Someone was fighting it—and it looked like someone with magic.

The monster buckled, but didn't go down. It prepared to lunge, but I drew my taser first and jabbed it into its side, hitting it with the highest setting this thing had. The shadow rippled, recoiling, but didn't seem to take any real damage. Of course not. It was way too big for my taser to do anything significant.

It turned and swiped at me, but I ducked away before it could reach, guided by pure instinct. It was reflexive, something I'd practiced a million times. Bitch's dogs, Golem's constructs—they all moved faster than this thing, and hit just as hard. I'd fought worse. I'd fought so much worse. My hat toppled off my head, and I quickly scrambled to reach down and stuff it in my bag. My sunglasses stayed on, for all the good they did.

The monster lunged at me, and I rolled to the side, hitting it with the taser again. This time, it seemed to have less of an effect. Was it adapting? Or…

Or maybe I had to hit it a third time. There was power in threes, wasn't there? In repetition, patterns? Hit it three times, and the third time should be more powerful. I dodged another few swipes, backing away. It was getting more aggressive now, but… maybe it was more defensive, too? Maybe my theory was right, and it really didn't want to get hit a third time.

A leg shot out, catching me in the thigh, and I hissed with pain. My leg felt warm and slick with blood.

More gunshots flashed in my periphery, slamming against the shadow with heavy impacts, sending it stuttering backwards. A man with short blond hair and a gun sprinted from the opposite end of the hall, tackling the thing with all his weight.

That was my opening. Ignoring the wound in my leg, I ran forward, jabbing the taser in a third time, and this time, it screamed. It wasn't like anything I'd heard before in my life—not human or animal. It was an amalgam of metal screeching and gurgling fluid, like a steel grinder made of congealed blood. The blond man fired six more shots at point-blank range, and as the beast weakened, he drew a length of barbed wire and wrapped it around the monster multiple times. I held it down as he worked, pressing my weight against it and jabbing the taser in intervals of three.

"One, two, three," I mumbled, stabbing with all the force I could muster. "One, two, three. One—" It lashed out, knocking the wind out of my lungs, but I pushed past the pain and kept after it. I hit it again and again as the blond man continued to work.

And then finally, it was over. There was no way that a piece of barbed wire that small should've been able to hold a monster that size, but… it did.

The beast continued to roar, shaking the building, but was seemingly immobilized. I caught my breath, glancing at the cut on my leg. It was shallow, surface level, but still painful. Far more painful than it should have been. The blond man caught his breath, too, looking me up and down. His face was covered in scars, I noted.

"You must be Taylor," he said. His voice was gruff, quiet; the kind of thing you'd expect from the protagonist of a war movie. He must've been one of the town's capes—or Others, I amended. I thought back to the girls' texts, that primer they'd sent me. The only kind of Other that matched his description was… a dog of war. A kind of war spirit.

"Yeah," I said, turning my attention back towards the monster. "Is that wire going to hold?"

He nodded. "It'll hold for long enough. I could've dealt with it myself, but you did good work. I'm impressed."

I stared at the monster, peering into the void. "What is this thing?"

"Bathos," the dog of war said. "A creature from the Abyss."

That hadn't been in my primer. I'd never even heard of the Abyss before. "Someone must've sent it here, right? Because it's too… dumb to have come here on its own. Too animal."

"Someone did," he confirmed, glancing back the way he'd come. "You'd better go find them. I'll watch over the Bathos."

"Wait," I said. "They're here?"

He nodded. "The girls are going after them right now. They could use your help. Up the stairs, down the hall."

I swore, grabbing the hat from my bag and immediately running toward the stairs. The conspirators were here, and the girls had been left alone to deal with them? I ran as fast as I could, straining my lungs, climbing the stairs two steps at a time, pressing down the burning pain in my leg. I slammed the hat on tight as I reached the top of the stairs, catching the scene before me.

There were people everywhere, scattered throughout the hall, loudly shuffling past. Off to the side, a cop with a broken nose and an ostentatious watch was commanding people to evacuate.

"Everybody out!" he shouted. "Keep calm, but move!"

Beside him were a couple of kids: an blond androgynous looking teen in a hoodie, holding onto an overweight girl with big, messy hair. Further back, there was Lucy and Avery.

"Bridge!" Lucy shouted. "Let's talk!"

The cop placed a hand on his gun, and the overweight girl tensed, glancing frantically toward the cop before turning toward Lucy and Avery. I didn't know what was going on, but if I had to guess, I'd say it was a hostage situation, with the overweight girl squarely in the middle of it. If the conspirators were here, then this had to be them.

"Did you tell them?" he asked the androgynous kid.

They shook their head. "McKay did, I think."

I didn't know who McKay was, but if I was looking for three conspirators, he'd be the third.

None of them had noticed me just yet—not even Lucy and Avery. Maybe the hat was good for something after all—or maybe, a part of me thought, nobody was noticing me because it was a hat, and I was a nameless figure in a crowd of people. Any hat could've done the job, helping me blend into a crowd. I didn't need magic for that.

I was behind the cop, and his focus was on the kids in front of him. I could deal with this quickly and quietly before anyone got hurt.

Slowly, I raised my taser and pressed my way through the frightened crowd, approaching the cop. He was the biggest threat here, I figured. He had a gun, and if what I knew about Practice was true, then it meant he was the biggest threat, because magic couldn't be witnessed by innocents, and there were innocents everywhere here. A gun—a standard, ordinary weapon—would be the most powerful tool in this room.

But a taser wouldn't be half bad, either. I lifted it, came near striking distance of the cop and his compatriot, and—

And at that moment, they turned around. They'd been preparing to run, and had picked my exact direction to do so. They saw me with the taser in my hand, and froze.

The hat won't make you invisible, Miss had told me.

Immediately, the cop drew his gun, aiming it squarely at me. The kid pulled the overweight girl away, as if shielding her from whatever was going to happen next. The crowd screamed.

"What's going on?" a woman shouted. I didn't look to see who it was. It didn't matter. The bystanders were quickly shuffling out, trying to get away from whatever the hell was happening here.

"Who the hell…" the overweight girl grumbled, before her captor tugged on her arm, and she shut up.

"Don't move!" the cop shouted. "You stay right where you are!"

I raised my hand slowly, taser still clutched tightly. I tried very hard to ignore the gun pointed directly at my forehead. "Or what? You'll shoot me?"

"I will. Count on it."

"Let them go!" Lucy shouted from across the hall. "What did they do wrong?"

"Let's just leave them," the androgynous kid said quietly. "We don't need them."

The cop scowled at his partner. "She's a bargaining chip, like you said." He gestured toward me. "And this one wants to fight us. If we turn our back on her, she'll attack."

If Lucy and Avery were after these guys, then they had to be Others or practitioners, didn't they? They couldn't lie. But I could.

"You want to get out of here?" I asked. "Let the girl go unharmed, and I won't stop you."

The cop narrowed his eyes.

"In fact," I pressed on, "I'll personally escort you out of here, and make sure you escape without any harm done to you or your friend. How's that sound?"

He was thinking about it, I could tell. He chewed his lip, staring me down. The hall continued to grow emptier and emptier as people evacuated. There were only a few stragglers left. If I stalled for long enough, I wouldn't even need to do anything else—Lucy and Avery could take them out with whatever magic they had at their disposal.

"Let's take the deal," the kid urged. The overweight girl looked at me with something like hope in her eyes. And for a second, it looked like the cop was going to go for it.

Then he shook his head. "I have a different idea," he said, reaching out and grabbing my wrist.

His ugly watch seemed to melt, slipping off of his wrist, congealing into something that looked like a big, flat bug with translucent flesh. It quickly crawled off the cop's arm and onto mine, and—

And then I couldn't move. The bug turned into a watch around my wrist, wrapping around me so tight it hurt, lashing into my skin. My hand dropped my taser and grabbed the cop's gun without my input. He backed off, eyes widening. "Let's go," my mouth said to the kid.

Oh, fuck. The cop wasn't the bad guy, the Other that I had been confronting. No, it was the watch itself, some kind of body-stealing parasite. And it had me now. I struggled against its control with everything I had, but couldn't manage even a twitch.

It was a cruel kind of irony, wasn't it? This was what I'd done to so many others at Gold Morning, and now it was my turn. And it was terrifying. I couldn't move, couldn't control myself. In so many ways, I was more helpless than I had ever been before. Even when I was blind, I'd at least had my power to counteract it. Here, I had nothing. This fucking bug had crawled onto my arm and taken my life, and I had nothing to fight it with.

But then the watch Other took my hat off, and we froze.

Because something had just changed. I felt something in the back of my mind, something strange. A presence, but not. Familiar, but not. A huge pressure was weighing me down, pressing against me. And it wasn't remotely human. There were no human thoughts or emotions; just raw intent, too alien for me to decipher.

"What the hell?" my mouth whispered.

"What? What is it?" the androgynous kid asked.

It grew heavier and heavier, jolts of pain running through me, centering on my forehead, like something had stuck a hook to my skull and was dragging me into a black hole. I wanted to scream, but couldn't. I wanted to cry, but couldn't. It felt like my brain was bleeding, like the surgical scars I'd taken seven years ago had finally split and were seeping iron and copper into my head, and I was being pulled in way too many directions.

"There's… I don't…"

I bit my tongue hard enough to make it bleed. I wasn't sure if it was the watch that had done it, or if it was me.

And then my hand reached for the cop, and the watch jumped off my arm and back to its original host. The pain abated somewhat, but not entirely. I could breathe again, could move again. The hallway was finally empty, with no civilians in the way.

And the gun was still in my hand, so I pointed it at the cop's wrist and pulled the trigger before he could react. The overweight girl screamed.

The bullet went wide, hitting the man's arm but missing the watch. He screamed, and I felt bad, but there was nothing I could do about it. Shooting a pistol was so much harder than I'd remembered—especially when I only had my left hand, and it was injured, and I had a splitting headache on top of that.

"Guys!" I shouted, dropping the gun and retrieving my taser. If these guys were the conspirators, then we needed them alive—plus, the cop himself was probably innocent in all this. He didn't deserve to die for what the watch had made him do.

He reached out toward me, but it was too late.

The androgynous kid and the overweight girl backed away as I stabbed my taser into the cop's stomach, sending the guy to the ground, clutching at his gut. He stuck his hand out, and I thought the watch was going to jump ship again, but Avery somehow closed the distance in the blink of an eye (had she teleported?) and poured salt on the ground, forming a circle around him.

Lucy caught up, panting. "You're caught, Bridge," she said. "Beaten, bound. Agree to our terms, surrender, and we'll promise to try to treat you fairly."

The cop groaned.

"I think," I said, wincing at the surge of pain in my head, "he's gonna need a second before he can talk."

And so did I, apparently, because another burst of pain hit me, and I had to sit down, leaning against the wall for support. It was growing worse again, and dread began to build in my heart.

No, it can't be.

"Are you alright?" Lucy asked me, frowning.

My hat. I needed my hat. I grasped around the floor, reaching for it. It took a few tries, scrabbling against the tile before I finally touched rough cotton, and slammed it down over my head. The moment the hat touched my hair, my pain subsided entirely, vanishing into nothing, save for a few phantom aches.

Safe.

I gasped in air. "Don't know," I managed. I gave a passing glance at the androgynous kid. "They a threat?"

Lucy shook her head.

The two kids I didn't know gawked at me. "Who the hell is this?" the overweight girl asked. "What the hell did she just—"

"Melissa," Avery said, cutting her off. "Not now. Please." She turned to me. "Can you walk? I don't think it's safe to stay here."

I blinked the stars from my eyes. "It's fine," I mumbled. "Already took out the Bathos."

Lucy frowned. "Wait, you did?"

"Uh-huh," I said, resting my eyes a little. "Downstairs. There's a… guy watching it."

I sagged against the ground. I was so tired, and the adrenaline was starting to wear off. I was okay now. The pain had drained out of me entirely, and all that was left was exhaustion. I'd be fine. I was bleeding, losing blood, but I'd be fine.

"Taylor?" Avery asked, but I didn't have it in me to respond. I needed… rest. That was all. "I think you might need a doctor."

Yeah. I was aware.

"...Don't let me wear the hat too long," I mumbled just before passing out.

 

[ImperatorV]

...Well. We now know whether QA is going to be in the story or not. And of course Miss somehow managed to have exactly the right thing on hand for dealing with the situation. It'd be an ass-pull if it wasn't completely in character for her, she had a ton of goodies stashed with various out-of-town allies of hers and much of it was never defined. Lost stuff canonically is essentially impossible to defend against if you aren't prepared for exactly Lost BS, which would explain why it works when a normal diagram gets blown to bits.

It's pretty funny that Taylor immediately assumes the body-snatcher crew are the Carmine Conspiracy though, when they're literally random troublemakers that wandered in.

 

[NemoMarx]

It makes a lot of sense that cape persona stuff - fronting and managing your reputation and being theatrical about it - would translate nicely into the magic here. Spins a good story and a recognizable identity pretty well.

Although I assume it might have effects if you commit to the bit?

 

[Ashran]

It'd be interesting if after all these fears QA didnt make her Khepri at all, and instead some new kind of balance was reached.

 

[Young Pyromancer]

wincing

Click to shrink...

winced again.

Click to shrink...

I winced at the comment.

Click to shrink...

Overuse of a word here. To avoid this kind of thing, read your chapters out loud, preferably to someone. No, not mumble, like fully actually read it. It helps you be more aware of these things.

It'd be interesting if after all these fears QA didnt make her Khepri at all, and instead some new kind of balance was reached.

Click to shrink...

Normally, that's what I'd suspect. The Khepri power set was only given via changing her brain, not the shard, so it stands to reason if it was changed once by brain altering, it would be again.

However, this is pact, and Khepri is being built up to.

 

[keighthundred]

I woke up fighting, channeling pure adrenaline, battling the last remnants of some almost-forgotten nightmare. The sheets were coated in sweat, uncomfortable, sticking to my legs and arm. The dream was so indistinct, difficult to piece together, but in the clearest moments, I remembered seeing the Nine. Bonesaw. Being strapped down to a table as a saw came down on my head, paralyzed, helpless. Then the cut.

It hurt twice as much, because these dreams had stopped. I hadn't had something like this for almost a year now. Therapy had helped. Talking it out had helped. Making a few friends in college had helped, even if they were flimsy, and ended soon after my classes had. But I'd worked for it, fought for every inch of peace until the nightmares had finally stopped.

One single fight had brought it all right back to me.

I let out a breath I didn't realize I was holding. Then another. Muscles started to unclench and I began to untangle myself from the bedsheets.

I could hear hushed voices echoing from a few rooms over. They were too low to make out, but with the sort of angry tone that meant things were tense. I wasn't at a hospital, not somewhere safe. I took a few more steadying breaths before I opened my crusty eyes. It was a painfully ordinary bedroom, with the type of eggshell-white walls you'd expect to find in a cheap apartment and adorned with a set of plain wooden furniture only a half-step above thrift store donations. There were no personal effects around, so I guessed it was someone's guest room. A glass of water sat on the nightstand beside me, next to a faintly bloodstained bandage. Birds chirped, and it was light outside—lighter than it had been when I'd fainted, which meant that I'd been out for at least an entire night.

Everything about this room was so painfully normal it almost felt off-putting—everything, except for the person standing over me.

The goblin girl was there, frozen mid-stride beside me on a pillow, holding my hat like she was trying to steal it and hadn't expected me to wake up.

Ugh.

"Give that back," I said, my voice betraying how tired I felt.

She looked at the hat, which was almost as big as her, then back at me. "It's mine! Finders keepers!"

I pushed myself into a sitting position, wincing at the jolt of pain that ran through me as I did. "I'll make you regret it."

"Nuh-uh! You only have one arm, stupid!"

I rubbed my eyes. "Only need one arm to use a taser. Don't need any arms to tell the girls what you did, get them to fuck with you in retaliation."

"Nuh-uh," she repeated, as if that was an actual argument.

Then the door swung open, and the conversation outside grew slightly more audible—but still too low for me to distinguish anything being said.

"Cherrypop, give it back," Avery said as she came into the room, followed by Snowdrop. The goblin girl—Cherrypop—groaned dramatically and shoved the hat at my face. It bounced off my nose, landing on the bed beside me.

"Ow," I said.

Avery flashed an apologetic smile at me, and then turned to Snowdrop. "Do you mind getting her out of here?"

The opossum-girl shook her head. "Of course I mind." But despite her words, she turned to the goblin, and said, "Wanna come steal some strawberry milk with me? I'm not thirsty, and I'll really hate it if you make me drink it."

Cherrypop cackled, leaping off the bed and heading out the door, Snowdrop trailing close behind. "Bahaha! You're so stupid, Snowdrop! I'm gonna make you chug a whole gallon of it!"

As the door clicked shut behind them, Avery sat down next to me on a folding stool. "Sorry about her. How are you feeling?"

"Like shit," I said, trying to sit up a little straighter, wincing. "Uh—sorry. I shouldn't be swearing around you."

"It's alright," she said. "Nothing I haven't heard before."

My mouth felt dry, and a lingering headache throbbed behind my eyes, but the pain was significantly less than it had been before. It was a different kind of hurt, which I hoped was a good sign. They'd fixed up my legs with magic, apparently, because there wasn't even a scar left behind. And they'd changed my clothes too, which was a little more disconcerting. I was wearing someone's pajamas, blue and pinstriped, and whoever they belonged to was apparently a size or two larger than me.

I shook my head. "What are they talking about out there?" I asked.

She hesitated. "You, mostly."

I shifted in bed. "Yeah?"

"It's… a little complicated. A lot of the locals aren't super happy that we invited you to stay in town. But it's not like they can make you leave, because you're bound here under our oath, and they're bound to not do us harm under their oaths. So…" She shrugged.

"Politics," I said, sighing.

"Yeah, basically. Politics. Lucy's out there playing defense right now."

I got the picture—I'd gone through this kind of thing plenty of times back when I was with the Wards. The sort of jockeying for power with no clear or good end. I was used to it by now. "Just Lucy? What happened to Verona?"

Avery shifted awkwardly. "She's going through some rough stuff right now. Her dad…" She trailed off. "Sorry. It's not my place to say."

Her dad—the guy I'd met at work? I hadn't gotten the impression that he was a particularly nasty person, but I knew how little that actually meant. People thought Emma had been nice. And in a chilling way, it recontextualized some things for me—like the fact that Verona hadn't had any problem with an unknown cape interacting with her father.

I sat up straighter. "Is she okay?"

"She's—" Avery bit down. "She's coping. She's with her mom right now, and she'll be there for a bit. Don't worry about it."

It didn't sound reassuring in the least, but I could tell Avery didn't want to talk about it any more. I made a mental note to find him on my own later. "Where am I?" I asked, trying to change the subject.

"Matthew's and Edith's house. I know you were supposed to meet him at a coffee shop, do things low-key, but the cat's kind of out of the bag now."

"I guess it is." There was a glass of water on the nightstand, which I assumed was for me. I reached out toward it, but it was to my right, which meant I had to strain with my left arm, twisting awkwardly to try and get it.

"Here, let me grab that." Avery leaned over and passed me the glass.

"Thanks," I said, taking a long sip before handing it back. "Where's, uh, the rest of my stuff? My sunglasses, my clothes."

She gestured to a duffel bag on the floor. "There was blood on them, so Edith gave them a wash. The pants are kind of cut up, though. Not sure if you wanted to keep those."

"That's, uh, fashionable, right?"

Avery raised a dubious eyebrow. "Maybe ten years ago, it was."

"...Ah." Even now, I didn't really get fashion. "What happened to the capes—the Others we were fighting? The Bathos, and the watch guy?"

"Dealt with, for now."

"Were they who you were looking for? The conspirators?"

She shook her head. "They were just some people trying to take advantage of an opportunity," she said. "You know that person whose death we're investigating?"

I nodded.

"She kept order in the region. With her gone, things are getting worse. More violent. Bloodier."

"There's a power vacuum," I said. "People are fighting over the role?"

"I mean—yeah. But also in a more abstract way. Things are less stable, more dangerous. There are people fighting for the role, but not those guys you met. Those Others were just there because the perimeter was weakened, and they saw a chance to use it to help themselves. There'll probably be more like them soon."

A perimeter that was weakened by me. So it was my fault they had come here.

Avery must've noticed the look in my eyes, because she shook her head. "It's probably not your fault," she said. "The perimeter was weakened before you showed up. You didn't help things, but they probably would've come through anyway. We've been dealing with guys like them all summer."

"Opportunists." I pushed the blankets off of me.

"Yeah." She paused. "Look, Taylor, before you get up—can I ask? What happened back there?"

I averted my eyes. "What do you mean?"

"When Bridge jumped to you, he freaked out and left. What did you do?"

That was the question, wasn't it: what had I done? And the answer was maybe the most terrifying thing it could be. It was something I desperately didn't want to admit to myself.

"I don't think it was me," I breathed.

Avery swallowed. "Was that Khepri?"

"I—no," I said. "You guys need to be specific, right? Practice is pedantic like that?"

"Yeah."

"That was my power—I call it my passenger. The closest thing to a human name I have for it is the Queen Administrator. If you want to be specific, that's what you should call it. Khepri is…something else."

Avery was quiet for a long time after, before finally saying, "Your power. You think that's what it was?"

"I'm not sure. It didn't feel the same. I hope it isn't, but…" I looked up, met her eyes. Her face wore a mixture of fear and determination. "I don't think there's anything else it could be."

She gripped the sides of her stool. "What about now? Do you feel it now?"

I thought about it. There was something that I might've thought was a slight headache, but it was minute, only an echo of what I'd felt before. And that could easily be from my injuries during the fight, or from just feeling sick in general.

"I'm not sure," I said. "But I don't think so. I'm not wearing the hat right now, and—" I gestured toward my forehead. "No headache. I'm not feeling that… presence that I was before."

"That's good," she said, letting out a sigh of relief. "We were worried, you know?"

"Yeah, I'm glad I'm not dead, too."

She chuckled awkwardly, before clearing her throat. "...About what you did back there—that was really cool of you. You didn't have to do all that for us. So—thank you for saving Melissa."

Didn't I? Miss had told me to take actions that were distinctly me, and rushing headlong into a fight seemed pretty characteristic of the me of yesteryear.

There was a balance to it, I figured. Now that my passenger seemed to be actively pursuing me, the hat was my lifeline, the only thing that could keep it at bay—but it came with a cost, and that cost had to be paid through presence. So I had to play the part of the hero I once was to avoid becoming the monster from Gold Morning. There was a sort of irony there that I was sure the spirits appreciated.

"Melissa was that girl?" I asked. "The hostage?"

She nodded.

"Friend of yours?"

"A classmate. She's Aware, like you, but doesn't know nearly as much. We've tried to keep her in the dark, but she's been digging on her own, finding trouble, and she's learned enough now that her innocence isn't protecting her as much as it used to. Things could've gone a lot worse if you weren't there."

"Why didn't you tell her about this stuff?" I asked, frowning. "If she's already Aware, isn't she vulnerable? Why not give her the tools she needs to defend herself?"

"It's a really bad idea, most of the time," Avery said. "Depending on the person, making someone fully Aware can hurt more than it helps. We wanted to keep Melissa out of this life, because once you get in, it's really hard to get out."

"But you told me."

"Well… yeah. You were already neck-deep in this—you've got your passenger connected to you and it's pretty obvious. Plus, if you were telling us the truth, you've got years of experience dealing with dangerous stuff. And you're an adult, and you're clearly capable. Melissa… isn't."

"Ah."

"And, you know, Miss vouched for you."

Of course. Miss again. Everything circled back to her.

"Can you do me a favor?" she asked suddenly. "Two favors, actually."

I frowned. "Depends on what the favors are."

"The first one is simple. When you go out there, don't tell anyone that Miss is back? She's working on stuff for us, and it's probably better if she stays under the radar for now."

I narrowed my eyes. "Have you considered that she could be one of the conspirators? That she's playing you?"

Avery nodded. "Believe me, we have. Just… trust me when I say that we've looked into things, and we're pretty certain where we stand with her."

"Okay," I said, relenting. "Fine. I get it. I won't mess with any plans you've got in motion. What's the other thing?"

"Could you talk to Melissa for me? Convince her to let all this go? Because she hasn't really been listening to me, and the impression I get from her is that she still thinks this is all a game. But based on what she was saying after you passed out, I think she respects you. She might listen to you."

"That could be dangerous," I said. "If she sees me as a role model, she might try to imitate me. I might end up making things worse."

Avery nodded. "Which is why I'm asking you to talk to her, try to get her off that path before it's too late. It might already be too late, but…"

She was worried about her friend. I could understand that. She already had too many people to worry about. If I could take one problem off her plate, then I'd do it.

"Yeah," I said. "I can do that."

She smiled. "Great. Thank you."

"I have to warn you, though," I said, climbing out of bed, "I'm notoriously bad at convincing kids to do the right thing."

Avery laughed at that and I hoped it would hold as a good sign. I rose slowly, testing my feet to make sure I was stable before fully committing to standing. I grabbed the duffel bag containing my things, and Avery took up a spot behind me as we walked through the door.

It was finally time to meet the locals.

🟂​

"—not your decision to make," an elderly woman said. She wore a black dress with layered panels and dozens of odds and ends attached to her outfit—curved blades, loose scrolls, an honest-to-god birdcage. "A choice like that affects all of us."

"Trust us," Lucy said, scowling. "You guys chose us to protect Kennet, we swore to uphold that, so trust that we've got the best intentions here."

"We're trying," a younger man said. He was in his mid-twenties, with brown, scraggly hair and tired eyes. This was Matthew, judging by the description I'd been given of the man. "But you've invited her into our town behind our backs, and by your own admission, you're not even sure what she is. And because she's not an Other or practitioner herself, her oaths aren't even binding."

"We did tell others before we offered her a spot in Kennet. We told John, for one. And are you saying you'd prefer if she was a practitioner? You want us to awaken her, have a fourth practitioner in Kennet?"

"Absolutely not," the elderly woman said.

"It leaves us in a really precarious spot," Matthew said. "She's not bound by the Oath of Solomon. If she decides to break her promise to you, then you three are ruined, and that'll splash back on the rest of us."

"She just fought an Abyssal beast for us," Lucy said. "Fought it hand-to-hand, and nobody even had to ask her to help. Doesn't that prove anything?"

"It proves that she was willing to fight," the elderly woman said. "As for her motivations, it's wiser not to make assumptions."

"Then ask her," Lucy said, exasperated. "Talk to her yourself instead of whispering behind her back."

That sounded like as good a time as any to step in. I cleared my throat and gave a hesitant, "Uh, hi."

All eyes turned toward me.

There were half a dozen people in the room with me—besides the elderly woman, Matthew, and Lucy, there were three people who hadn't yet spoken: a short, fat guy with a monocle and an ill-fitting waistcoat; an average-looking teenage girl; and the blond man I'd seen yesterday—the dog of war. It was a living room, and they all had taken places around the room, on couches and in chairs circling the fireplace. Only the elderly woman insisted on standing, taking a spot across from the rest, against the wall.

And behind me, of course, was Avery.

"Ms. Hebert," Matthew said wearily. "You're up."

"I am." I met all their eyes, sweeping my gaze across the room. "Thank you for taking care of my injuries while I was out."

"That was Tashlit, mostly," Lucy said. "She's not here right now, but I think she'd be glad to see that you're up." She gave the others a side-eye. "Most of us are."

I'd been in Kennet for barely a month, and already I had enemies here. That was fine. I knew how to manage situations like this—my whole cape career had consisted of wrangling one hostile set of leaders after another. I'd faced the PRT's board of directors after killing two of them.

I wasn't scared of these people.

"I appreciate it," I said. "If you want to know why I went in there, I'll tell you. There were innocent people in danger, and I couldn't let them get hurt."

The elderly woman folded her arms, unimpressed. "Coming from you, that means nothing."

I frowned. I had been warned that not being awakened meant something when it came to Others, but I hadn't expected it to be like this. It really was just like when I had first joined the Protectorate. Every action I did, every word I said, would be scrutinized and twisted back onto me.

At least this time, the entire world wasn't at stake.

"Practice is supposed to be versatile," I said. "I'm no expert, but are you telling me that between all of you, there's no way for you to know if someone is telling the truth or not?"

"Humans are fickle," the elderly woman said. "That you're telling the truth now does not guarantee that you won't change your mind later."

"Sounds like you're looking for an excuse to distrust me," I said. "There'll never be anything I can do to prove myself to you, is there? It'll never be enough."

"There will always be a seed of doubt," she said, nodding. "Waiting to take root."

Just like with the Directors, I thought. Exactly the same.

"Well," I said, "that's tough shit."

Everybody's eyes flashed in surprise. What, had they expected me to be afraid? To collapse under pressure? They all looked some degree of offended, except for the guy with the monocle. He was smiling, just a little. I'd gained points with him, it seemed.

There was my in.

I pushed on. "You can't make me leave, because it'll ruin you. I don't want to leave, for exactly the same reason. We're at an impasse. So either you can learn to deal, we can work together, or—"

"Hold on," Avery said, cutting in. "How about we start with some introductions first?"

"I think that's a good idea," Lucy said. "Before we get into things, we should introduce you to each other."

I bit back a curse. They were ruining my momentum. But I didn't want to step on their toes, so I nodded.

"This is Matthew, Toadswallow, Crooked Rook, and Lis," Lucy said, gesturing toward the brown-haired man, the fat guy with the monocle, the elderly woman, and the average-looking girl, respectively. "You met John yesterday," she said, pointing toward the blond Dog of War.

"I've met Lis before, too," I said.

Lis gave a little wave. But she looked different than the last time I'd seen her—she was a decade younger, with medium-length brown hair. Nothing like the woman wearing a copy of my hair that I'd seen in the grocery store. Was she a shapeshifter? I'd have to ask the girls later.

"And that's Cig," Lucy finished, pointing at the coffee table, where a lit cigarette sat.

I paused, momentarily lost for words. "That's… a person?"

"Depends on your definition of person, I think."

I blinked. Okay. I'd seen weirder things.

"There are others in Kennet, but they're currently out. You'll probably get the chance to meet them later."

"And to everyone else here," Avery said, "this is Taylor, formerly known as Weaver. Interdimensional refugee, former superhero, and possible Harbinger."

I gave her a glance. "Did you explain to them about…" I made a vague gesture to try and encompass everything I was thinking.

"They know the basics, enough to understand. Your patron, the world you come from."

"Allegedly," the old woman—Crooked Rook—said. "Which we have already established—coming from your mouth, it means nothing."

"Well, now," the fat guy—Toadswallow—said, baring his teeth. "Let's hear the girl out."

"To what end?" Crooked Rook asked, sounding distinctly bored. "You want to hear her tell lies? Tall tales? The novelty wears thin very quickly, I assure you."

"I'm intrigued," he said. "It's not every day you meet a supposed superhero."

"It's not as glamorous as it sounds," I said. "And I didn't exactly fit the traditional image of a superhero."

"I'd rather hear about your patron," Matthew said. "If you don't mind."

I raised an eyebrow. "What about it?"

"The nature of your relationship. The girls have given some explanation, and what little they've told already has me worried."

"Well, then what would you like to know?" I asked, gesturing with my hand.

"How much control over the relationship between it and you do you have?"

Shit. Already starting off with the hard questions. I should have expected as much.

"That's a little complicated."

"Complicated how?"

"If you'd asked me that at any point in the last seven years, I'd have told you that it was gone. That there was no chance of it coming back. A woman, probably the only woman in the universe who could, removed it. But now I'm learning that it's had a tiny connection to me this whole time, and it's finally starting to find me again." I took a breath. "Maybe it's been trying to find me all along. I'm not sure. Before that, I'd have told you that I was completely in charge, that I had full control over it."

"But?"

"But that wasn't exactly true. My passenger, my patron, always had a small amount of influence over me. Nothing as obvious as what you might think, just a nudge here and there to put me in situations it favored. For years, that was it. And then Gold Morning happened."

He frowned. "Gold Morning. Lucy, you mentioned that before."

"An apocalypse event," she provided. "In Taylor's world."

"It was supposed to be the end of every world," I said, my voice growing a bit more robotic as I continued. "Of every possible version of Earth. Our most powerful hero, Scion, turned on us. He tried to destroy everything and had the power to do it, if left unchecked. We learned that he wasn't human, never had been, and was the one to set everything in motion—my world, our powers. We stopped him, barely, but billions of people died in the process."

I looked around the room, and most of their faces showed clear disbelief. Only Lucy and Avery were visibly on my side.

"You see?" Crooked Rook asked. "Ridiculous."

"Entertaining," Toadswallow said, grinning.

"It happened," I said, barely holding myself back from a growl. "It was real. Everyone was fucking dying and people were just giving up. We were desperate and…I took a risk. My powers were useless against him, and we needed a trump card. I had someone knock down the walls between myself and my passenger, to change the nature of our connection, hoping for something that could help us. And it worked; I was stronger. But I wasn't…it wasn't totally me, and I wasn't really in charge. If the girls mentioned Khepri to you? That's what that was, when I lost control. My power was taking over, and to save me, I had to be cut off from it. So if that's the way our connection ended, and Practice is all about patterns? Chances are that it's the way it'll come back."

"And your passenger," Matthew said. "What is it?"

I paused for a second, considering the best way to explain this. "One of the girls mentioned something about Scion reminding them of an especially powerful god. If you're looking at it from that perspective, then my passenger would be a fragment of that god. A piece of it, made with a specific purpose, and fine-tuned to give one specific power."

"The same god that wanted to destroy all realities?"

I grit my teeth, but tried not to let it show. I was losing my cool—this conversation was affecting me a lot more than I thought it would. "More or less. But my passenger, my power—it doesn't want the same thing that Scion did. It helped me stop him."

"But it's a part of him all the same. Do you see the problem here?"

"Of course I do," I snapped. "I'm as worried about it as you. That's why I'm asking you for help."

"Help can be expensive and unwieldy," Crooked Rook said. And then she glanced at the Dog of War, John. "A bullet is cheaper. And simpler."

I couldn't help it—I barked out a laugh. "Yeah? You want to kill me? I'm no expert in Practice, but killing an Innocent when all she's done is help you seems like a bad fucking idea. I don't think the spirits would take very kindly to that."

"You're not very Innocent," she argued. "And you're a potential threat to this town."

"I'm also a potential boon to this town. I've already sworn to help protect it. I've got experience and skills, and the girls already backed me up on my oath, reinforced it themselves. So if you kill me, you're killing a member of Kennet who only wanted to help. You can try to hash that out with the spirits all you like, but I doubt you'll get too far."

"You would be surprised," she said. "Your words and intentions mean less than others'. It would be trivial to arrange matters against you."

"Maybe," I said, scrambling to cover my slip-up. "Maybe so. But you really want that kind of reputation on your hands? A town that turns on its own? I wonder how that would affect that perimeter of yours, how others see you."

"Well, now," Toadswallow said. "There's a saying—better the devil you know. We know roughly what would happen if we slit your little throat. We know next to shit about what will happen if your patron takes over, don't we?"

I clenched my fist. So Toadswallow had swapped sides. They were all against me now, weren't they?

I was too pissed to speak, so instead focused on a few deep breaths. I was about to retort with something volatile—an insinuation that I'd set up some kind of mutually assured destruction, that I'd set something up to leak info about Practice and Kennet's issues if anyone came after me. It wasn't true, obviously, but they'd already stated outright that they couldn't tell if I was lying or not. Was it a bad idea? Maybe. But I was running out of options, and unlike the PRT directors, these guys didn't seem to have any qualms about killing me. They'd backed me into a corner. It was only fair that I pushed back a little. I wasn't going to go down without a fight.

But thankfully, Lucy cut me off before I could open my mouth. "John," she said sharply. "You met Taylor yesterday. What was your impression of her?"

He nodded. "She was brave. Adaptable. And she ran off to help you two as soon as I told her about you. It speaks to her character."

She waved her hands. "See?"

"One instance is not a pattern," Crooked Rook said. "It proves nothing."

"I get it," I said, cutting them off. "Look, you don't trust me. I get that. But let's be realistic here—I can't leave town, not without screwing the girls over. And clearly, none of us want that to happen."

"Your point?"

"Let's change things. I'm willing to play ball. I've helped you guys out already, shed blood for you, but if that's not enough, then tell me what is. Give me a chance to prove myself. You want me to establish a pattern? Give me time."

"Time could result in your patron winning, wreaking havoc. You could become another threat to this town without warning."

"Not if you help me prevent that. You don't want it to win, and neither do I. You've got to have resources to reach out to—something that could help me. Right now, I have this hat that hides my connections. It keeps my passenger at bay. But it comes at a price, and it's not a permanent solution. I'm looking for something more sustainable long-term. If you don't believe I'm being altruistic here, then believe that. Self-interest."

Crooked Rook frowned. "Where exactly did you get the hat?"

"I can't say." I shrugged. "I swore not to. And I think you'd all prefer if I kept my oaths, right?"

She crossed her arms. "Fine. You want a solution to your problem. What exactly can you do for us in return?"

I shrugged. "Whatever you need. I have years of experience. I've worked with villains and government organizations controlling territory. I've fought people bigger, badder, and more dangerous than me for years. If you don't trust me to do much in Kennet, then at least let me help patrol. Let me keep the peace around the perimeter. It would free up your time for more important things."

For a few tense heartbeats, everyone in the room was quiet. They flashed each other little looks, like they were trying to communicate through facial expressions and blinks.

Crooked Rook was the one to break the silence. "Fine," she said. "I'm amenable to that."

Wait, what?

All of a sudden, it was like the atmosphere of the whole room had changed.

"Me too," Matthew said. "I'd like to avoid bloodshed if we can. If Taylor is willing to help out, I'm willing to give her a chance."

"Now that's an interesting idea," Toadswallow said. "Our own little superhero. Sure, why not? But I'll lay down some conditions first. Letting the would-be Harbinger walk around the perimeter by herself seems like a ripe idea for disaster, don't you think? A brewing shitstorm in the making."

"You'll have one of your goblins watch her?" Matthew asked.

"One of them, or one of you," he said dismissively. "I doubt it takes very much to keep a powerless, one-armed woman in check."

"I'll do it," John said, meeting my eyes. "I can watch over her, and provide her with some training."

Thank you, John, I thought. Out of everyone here, he was possibly the only one besides the girls who was unequivocally on my side.

"Lis?" Matthew prompted.

The girl shrugged. "The more the merrier," she said. "I don't have a problem with it."

"Cig?" Matthew asked. The cigarette glowed a little brighter.

Uh—

"And we agree, too," Lucy said. "All three of us, plus Snowdrop."

"Yeah," Avery added. "From everything we've seen of her, she's trustworthy. We're all in agreement."

"Then it's settled," Matthew said, standing up, walking over to me. "We'll give it a day, and if there are no outstanding objections from any of the Others not currently in attendance, then you'll work with John, protecting the town and the perimeter. And in return, we'll look into ways to help you with your problem."

I frowned. "And if there are objections?"

"We'll deal with that at a later time." He held a hand out for me to shake. To the untrained eye, it looked like I'd won.

But it was all too easy, wasn't it? I glanced at all the faces in the room. Any one of them could be a conspirator. Even John. And even if they weren't, they were set against me from the start, just because of who I was, what I could end up becoming. I couldn't blame them for that, but I'd have to stay on my toes around them.

So with all that in mind, I took the handshake. For now, I would play along. There was no point in showing my hand too early.

It wasn't just my life on the line here—I had the girls to worry about, too.

"Deal," I said, forcing a smile.