"Here," Adam says in the morning, while we're walking, silently, beneath a gray sky. No good morning, Will. Sorry for yelling, Will. Would you like to have the first conversation in half a week, Will? I swear, even against Shiloh's guidance, I would tell him everything, right now, just so I can get the "you don't know what I've been through" out of my head, and when he finally shut his mouth for a second, I would finally be on even footing with him. Instead, I take a little piece of folded paper and begin to unfold it. "Don't," he warns me. "You have English with Evan Drake. I need you to give this to him."

"You're kidding me," I say. "I don't even get to look at it?"

"It's part of my mysterious backstory," he tells me. "Don't even think about it." With that, he slings his backpack over his back and enters the building, dodging around the people who used to be, at least to my knowledge, his best friends. The dark circles under his eyes, which, by the way, are not a new feature of his post-Megan existence, betray a coldness that his golden-boy demeanor used to cover up. I catch a glimpse of them only once as he turns in the crowd, looking over his back for someone.

My phone buzzes. One message is from my mom: Watch out for your brother, honey. Hope you are both doing ok. XOXO

We're fine! I respond, tacking on a smiley face for good measure. We're not!

Right, as if he'd let me. Another angry hum sounds as I get a message from Adam: I was serious. Don't open it.

I don't think I've ever heard a more blatant cry for help in my life. I unfold the paper, where, in scrawled handwriting, reads: I won't stop until I reach you.

I crumple it back up. For a second, out of pure spite, I legitimately consider throwing it in the trash, but I think I might break Adam's heart. Still, reading over it fills me with an unreasonable degree of dread. It reads like the kind of thing that could have come out of our world, vague and cryptic-- the world I do not share with Adam Rosenbloom. As I mutter the words over and over again, I can taste smoke in my throat, the forewarning of the psychic grip of secrecy. No matter what the truth is, I don't know if I'd be able to reach him. I don't even know if I'd want to.

A bell rings. Scatterbrained Will Rosenbloom, who has been mumbling to himself outside the school, hustles to class.

Classes are a mess. Lunch is a mess. Everyone at the Naval Brigade is halfheartedly discussing this mobile dating game because the alternative is talking about funeral plans. I had no idea how quickly funerals were thrown together until now, but the service is already planned for Saturday. Amanda shoots me a glance out of the corner of her eye, the knowing kind. I'm in the seat next to her, and her hair brushes my bare neck. She's pretending she's not leaning on me. Our chairs are set skew from each other, so she looks one way, at a compilation reel from one of her favorite animes playing on her phone, and I stare at a half-blank note on mine.

-Garrett portal utilization-- sweeping Karen and Amanda around

-How to handle close-range organisms???

-going for it

-we just don't go for it when we have the chance

-stop being a coward Will, someone is going to get hurt

Shiloh didn't write that. I swear. I promise. When lunch ends, I haven't added anything. Amanda goes one way. I go another. English isn't that far away, and even though I left lunch early, I'm almost last into the classroom. Sometimes I swear I must just have shorter legs than everyone else. While Ms. Adana explains the day's lesson, which involves another work period on a eight-minute video project I haven't started, partially due to my unfortunate choice in partner (I was the last person in the room-- second-to-last). Fortunately, it makes things a little easier in at least one regard.

"My brother told me to give this to you," I say, holding a slightly crumpled piece of paper in one hand, folded several times over.

Evan looks up at me like he did on the first day of school, like I'm handing him a dead fish instead of my hand. He swipes at it, catching it just as I try to jerk it away, and as he pulls the paper, he realizes my grip is still taut. "Is this some kind of sick joke?"

"Tell me what's going on," I say.

"We're grieving, and it's been bad for--" Evan twitches. "Please, please just give me the note. I haven't heard from him in forever."
"It's been three days!"

"That's forever!" Evan finally snatches the paper from my hand. Ms. Adana swivels around, like an owl.

"Is there a problem in the back?" asks Ms. Adana.

"No, Ms. Adana, besides my friend dying, everything is fine," Evan says, with the saccharine intonation of a raunchy parody of a children's TV show, a thin coat of icing over a bed of knives.

"Evan, would you like to be excused to see the counselor?"

"I don't think she wants to see me," Evan says. With a quick roll of his eyes, he follows up, "I'm fine."
Ms. Adana narrows her eyes.

"Did you have a break up?" I ask, lowering my voice with the firm implication that he might want to do the same.

"No." Evan opens the paper. "Fuck."

"How did Megan die?"
"C-car?" Evan says, with this terrible, twitching smile, like it's a punchline to a joke that's not all that funny. He buries his head in his hands. "Fuckkk." He runs over the 'k' several times, so that it sounds like embers lighting at the back of his throat.

"Why would he send you something like this? Why aren't you talking to him--" I say. Tell me you're in this. Tell me-- maybe Ignatius is turning our loved ones against us. Maybe there's some connection. Tell me anything, please, we can do this together. It would be so much easier.

Evan Drake stands up. He's no longer covering his face, but he has his hands over his ears. The edge of his mouth twitches several times. "Can I go see the counsellor, Ms. Adana?"

"Of course, Evan."
He leaves. I lean against the wall, hard. My phone is buzzing with notifications from the Naval Brigade. They are so far into fiction that they can not talk about anything. Megan came up a hundred times on the first day and three the second one, amongst hundreds of messages. She's already being buried beneath the nothingness that surrounds her, an endless series of ways to escape. They're all franchises that she knew and liked, crushing out her memory. We can't talk about her yet, maybe, not in any meaningful way, so we just can't talk about her. I watch the messages go for the rest of class, intending at any point to snap back to the project or the task at hand, still dormant in my notes section.

Evan doesn't come back. Class ends without him.

I head into the Veins. I take an old, familiar portal, one that appears time to time in an alleyway near our school. The others aren't there yet, but Shiloh and I wait for them diligently. He wreaths himself around my neck. We don't talk.

"Diagrams," Karen says, when she enters. Garrett's right behind her.

Shiloh jumps off my neck and runs up to a room on the second floor. We don't go upstairs often. No reason to stick around long. Shiloh returns with several diagrams, which unfold to show Ignatius's house, done in pristine detail. They're annotated by red marker, one of which rolls out onto the page. Shiloh nudges it towards Karen, who looks over her handiwork. Shiloh stands atop his illustrations with pride. They're not what one might call artistic renditions. Purposeful, yes, but there's no flourish.

I don't know if cherubs have a capacity for art.

"We enter here or here," Karen says. "Wait, where's Amanda?"
If there was a door to bust down in the Veins, Amanda would have done it. Instead, she just enters, scowling, and situates herself. "These are the plans?" she asks.

"We're going over the plans."
"When?" asks Amanda.

"I was thinking Saturday--"

"Can't. Busy."

"Right," Karen says. "Well, Monday? Sunday?"

Amanda huffs.

"We need you," Karen's lightningbolt gaze rests on Amanda. "People are going to get hurt without us. This might be the first time we're truly being heroes."

"Can we do Thursday?"

"That's late."

"Can we?"
Karen grimaces, but she eventually nods. "Fine, fine. But we better do this right. So, we enter here... but, and I know this is an unpopular opinion, with Shiloh conversing with Will and Garrett, we split the party. Amanda, Garrett, go in from above. Will and I take the bottom floor, and I blast my way through while Will comes in behind. We corner him in the house and we don't hesitate-- no points of escape if we get him both ways, otherwise he can flee out either way. Anyways. Amanda and Garrett, if you team up, Garrett can aim Amanda's paints. Garrett can also teleport us out of danger. It's a lot, but I know you've been practicing. I'll cover you, physically, as soon as we're back together, until we get a clear shot at him. Amanda, you're on crowd control."

"And Will?" asks Amanda.

"Also cover?" suggests Karen.

I lower my eyes. It's not a bad plan. Not a good plan, but I'm hoping we don't get to him. I'm hoping Amanda and Garrett get to him first, and Amanda can take the Diosite before Karen does. Before she can hurt him. I'll talk to her about it. Maybe we can get Karen to switch the teams. "What would I do? The only weapon I have is melee, and it's not that useful. I don't know. Maybe Shiloh can outfit me with something."

"I can't do that, Will," Shiloh says. "Your abilities are based off your personality and your personal desires. The stone only attunes to that."

"I want to be useful," I say. "I have to be useful."

"That's not in my control."

"I don't know why I have a shield, then. What is that supposed to say? What does it mean? Why didn't I-- if I'm going to get something that represents how pathetic I am, I could have gotten hydrokinesis, so I could work with my own tears. I could have gotten precognition, because I'm already scoping out every situation so I can be scared shitless of it before it even happens. Maybe something that makes it a little easier to struggle out of Ignatius's vines every time I get caught--"

Shiloh's face is a blank slate only imprinted upon by the longest frown I've ever seen, a desperate attempt to convey, without truly understanding how, how upset he is. No expression has ever been more eerie across his face than the long curve of disappointment.

"I'm not cut out for this," I admit. "You should have chosen my brother, Shiloh. He might have at least been a stable leader."

"No, he wouldn't," Amanda says. "Adam Rosenbloom wouldn't have done anything."

"He can keep himself together--"
"Has he?"
I look down.

"You're more qualified than you believe, Will."

"Are we all clear?" asks Karen. "This isn't a pity party. Sorry, but it isn't."

Can't believe she's right again. I'm going to kick myself. "I don't know," I say.

Karen gets to her feet. "We should go somewhere else."

"What?" I ask.

"That wasn't a question," she says.

"I think it's pretty clear what I'm supposed to do. Can I go home now?"

"Knock yourself out. I want to see Rosenbloom," Karen says. "Alone."

Amanda turns to leave. She flashes me a quick peace sign. I try to signal to her, using only my eyes, that we need a plan, as fast as possible, to protect ourselves from becoming murderers, or worse, endangering the entire human race. I have no idea which one of those things really deserves that "or worse", but calling where I am now between a rock and a hard place would be an understatement.

Karen steps past the door. "Shiloh, the Veins."

The gloom of the portal dissipates, letting the Veins outside show through. Karen walks through the near-darkness, and I follow. She has my hand, after all, although I don't know how she got it. "If you want to beat me up, it would have been easier to bring Garrett along, too."

"Nah," she says. "I found something. I need you to see it."

"It wouldn't happen to involve other people and the Diosite, would it?"

Karen raises an eyebrow. "Anyone else out there like us?"

"No," I say. "I was hoping."
Karen laughs, harshly. "Me too." She escorts me through a portal, and out onto the roof of a building. The air rushes around me in torrents of wind, chill in a way that cuts to the bone. I stare up into the orange sunset, sweltering as it descends into trees and buildings and fractures across anywhere it can get its light. "Better not be lying, Rosenbloom. If you've heard something, you'd tell us."
"Why do you think I'd hide anything from you?" The air smells like smoke and city refuse, like poison.

Karen's eyes glimmer with sunset. "Shiloh lies."
"You know that?"

"He'll say anything to keep you in line. I don't know that you're not the same way. Usually people who want you to feel sorry for you, well, sometimes they're genuine, but they get themselves in a position where they can hurt you, sometimes, intentionally or not, and once they've latched on--"

"I don't want people to feel sorry for me."

"You act like it."
"Sorry!"

"Stop apologizing."

"Sorry."

"And stop freaking out. This isn't about you."
"I know that," I say. "Why did you bring me out here?"

"I want you to promise me something," Karen says. "I didn't want you to promise it when he was there. When I could see his eyes. I can't trust that, even if I wanted to."
"He's always there," I say, with half a smile. "Sorry."

Karen runs her hands over her face. "This is exactly what I'm telling you about. Look. I wouldn't be out here unless Garrett and I had specifically chatted about this, but we did, we just about got to a conclusion, and now you're going to hear about it. If we get down there and things go bad, I need you to promise you'll stick to the plan and help me call the police."

"Why would you need help?" I ask.

Karen says, "You're gonna answer your own question."

"Shiloh."

"Yup."
"You don't trust him? Shiloh's been good to me. He's been good with us. When he helps--"

"Can you do anything without Shiloh?"

I hesitate.

Bad answer.

"That's not trust," Karen says. "What you have is a codependence. Don't confuse them. You'll wake up one of these days wondering where things went wrong, and you're a sweet kid, but you let people hurt you. You're used to taking the hits. This isn't something you win by outlasting the other person blow-to-blow. This is something you win by hitting them."

I look down at my feet. "I'm sorry."

"Last call, Rosenbloom, to get a handle on yourself."

A slap crackles through my mind like a thunderclap. I guess this would be where the precognition slips in. Karen hasn't touched me. No one has. In my mind, though, I'm imagining hitting first. "I'm in," I say.

She gives me a satisfied nod before walking off, hands in her pockets.

I finally understand why Ignatius was willing to bank so much on us not calling the police.

We could kill him. We always could have. It would be so easy to stop him outright, if we had the guts. Calling the police would be even easier.

He knows there's something stronger than either of us in the game, and he knows he will not have his way unless he's turned us on it or stopped it himself.

The wind wails through again.

I'm an optimist.

Karen disappears into the Veins.

I believe in a better option.