"I'm sorry I missed class—" she started. Once again, she took in the cluttered office with its ancient computer monitor and the Chair, now in a denim skirt and brown paisley blouse. The whole scene felt less like a part of her real life than it ever had. It didn't matter, though, because what she was planning to do was to resign. Assuming she didn't get fired first. She had the letter tucked into the pleather portfolio folder that she held between clenched fingers. She'd be willing to finish out the semester, but she wouldn't be back for the spring.

"No, no, no." The Chair stood up to greet her, arms out as if to catch Irene in a hug. "Welcome back!" She ushered Irene into a chair with repeated assurances of how happy the department was to have Irene return. "Your absence is totally understandable. A person cannot be expected to put themselves into positions where they don't feel safe." She stopped and regarded Irene for a long second. "I do hope you feel safe enough to return. You'll be happy to know that, thanks to your alert, the student in question was arrested. Expulsion proceedings are in the works, as well." She nodded and brushed her hands together as if she'd checked off her entire to-do list. Please don't quit now. There's no way we'll be able to find someone to fill those classes mid-way through the semester.

Irene pinched back the smile that wanted to pop out at what the Chair's thoughts revealed. It was better than the pity she wanted to feel for Josh. He'd brought his expulsion on himself, even if he probably could honestly claim that aliens made him do it. "Thank you for understanding."

"You weren't the only person he targeted," the Chair continued, as if Irene hadn't said anything.

Irene's eyebrows went up. Not only hadn't she known that on her own, the Chair's thoughts had given no hint. "Was she, or he—it could be a he—were they hurt?" She'd been able to get away because she had two teleporters looking out for her. What about everyone else? And, wow, there'd been other people. That meant that there were other Tomorrow People here on campus, which shouldn't statistically be a surprise, yet still was. "I mean, I understand if you can't say anything…."

"Everyone's fine," the Chair answered. How strange that he threatened two teachers on opposite sides of the campus. Josh didn't even take art. Poor Lizzie was so shaken up. "We take threats of violence on this campus very seriously, and security measures were implemented immediately." She forced out a deep breath. "Going forward, I sincerely hope that we can build a much more positive relationship. Please do not hesitate to let us know if you need anything to help you get re-acclimated."

Boy, did that change things. Not the offer, which the Chair might mean or she might just be trying to forestall a lawsuit, but the information about another Tomorrow Person.

It meant that she couldn't resign yet. Not today, anyway. She needed to go meet this art teacher and find out exactly how much they had in common. After that? Maybe Irene would stay here, in this place where there were Tomorrow People to be found. She couldn't do her research here, but she could still do research. And maybe it was time for some of the information she'd learned about Tomorrow People genetics to make it into the scientific conversation. She couldn't be the only biologist out there who had something to say on the topic. Someone had to be the first one, and with her insider knowledge, she had to be the one in the best position to break the ice. She glanced at her phone, comparing the time with the digital clock on the Chair's desk. Somehow, the times matched. "I'd better get to class," she said, standing up. "We have a lot of material to cover before the test, and now we're running behind."

"Of course," the Chair answered, standing up only an instant before Irene did. "There's just one other matter…" She was looking past Irene, her eyes narrowed.

Irene followed her gaze and caught a glimpse of Stephen through the open crack in the door. Suddenly the print-out of the Employee Handbook made sense. The Chair thought that Irene was dating Stephen: her student. Had Josh been responsible for that rumor, too? Probably. "Stephen's my friend," she stated. She wasn't going to allow an upstart student who couldn't even pretend to respect his instructor win even the smallest victory. "I knew him before I got the job here, and I'm not going to stop hanging out with him because I have the job here. I promise that our friendship won't cause a conflict of interest." We already have enough of those, she added to herself.

"Yes, good," the Chair answered. Again, she nodded, though a tightening of the muscles around her mouth gave away her suspicion of Irene's explanation. "It's important that everyone in this department stays on the same professional page." again, her thoughts gave nothing away. Irene suspected that the Chair would have pushed the issue further if she weren't afraid of giving Irene even more impetus to quit. Irene had dealt with a lot of strange powers recently; this one had to be the strangest of all—the power to subdue her boss simply by refusing to quit. She wasn't sure how she felt about having that kind of control. "You have our sincerest assurances that the school is doing everything it can to provide a safe and comfortable working environment."

Irene contemplated the scratched chalkboards and the desks that were so old they still had lead paint on them, and decided that that was a discussion for another time. Perhaps she could talk to someone about having Ultra make a grant to the Biology department. She appeared to know people these days. "I appreciate that." She cut another glance at her phone to emphasize the shortness of time. Then holding her portfolio close to her chest, she offered the Chair a final nod and smile, and stepped out of the office.

Stephen was waiting for her outside the Chair's office when she emerged. His backpack was slung over one shoulder with the hood from his sweater bunched up under the strap and around the back of his neck. He looked more at ease than she had seen him in weeks. "So?" he asked, falling into step beside her.

Irene tucked the portfolio under her arm, its letter still undelivered. "You mean you don't know?" If she had been him, she'd have been reading the minds of everyone in the room. Though, it was always possible that he was asking for information only out of politeness.

Lifting his hand, he showed her the suppressor bracelet, its pale blue light proof that it was on and working. Huh. She also would have ditched the bracelet. Now that she had her own powers back, she would know whether Stephen was using his in class. He might be a Synergist, but she'd still had her powers longer and knew a few more tricks about how to use them than he'd had time to learn. "You know, you don't need to wear that anymore?"

He shrugged. "I kinda like it. It's nice to have a part of my life that isn't all about superpowers. Not that I'd want to give up my powers permanently…" He shot a glance at her to check her reaction. The loss of her powers—now safely categorized as a temporary loss—was still a sore point in her personal history. When she didn't react, save for a slight lifting of her eyebrows, he continued, "Besides, it's important for all of us to remember what it's like to be regular humans."

Irene looked around at the students and staff passing them in the hallway. She saw turbans and bare heads and kippahs; jeans, shorts, long skirts, and super-short skirts; khafirs, t-shirts, and blouses. She saw all manner of heights and weights; able-bodied and not; black, brown, and beige skins. The vocal variety was just as strong. From the clusters of students who passed her, she heard at least a dozen different languages as well as English spoken in at least a dozen more accents. "Even though they keep trying to kill us?" she asked. How many of these people had been turned against the Tomorrow People? Would their brainwashing be undone now that the game was gone? She suspected it already had been because no one gave the two Tomorrow People so much as a sideways glance. Who knew about long-term affects, though. Ultimately she couldn't do much about the former players except understand that they existed. What she could do was work on the people who hadn't been affected: her fellow Tomorrow People, both current and future. She'd shown them that there were other ways to solve their problems. Now all she had to do was to get them to stop fighting their biology.

Stephen stepped aside for a young woman in a wheelchair who tilted her head as she passed, an odd expression crossing her face, like she recognized him from somewhere and couldn't place where. "It's a new world," he answered. "We're all going to have to learn to live in it together." Shoving his hands in the pockets of his hoodie, he contemplated an emergency route sign posted on the wall. His thoughts raced through his head so fast and so chaotically that Irene knew he wasn't seeing the sign at all. She waited, not wanting to grab onto a stray thought and follow it when a little patience would get her to the same place. At last, he continued without meeting her gaze. "Cara destroyed all the Annex serum. She also purged the records. It's gone. Destroyed. No one will ever be able to use it again."

"What?" Irene had heard him, of course. He'd only said the same thing four times. "She destroyed it? Like, all of it?" Relief. She should be feeling relief. So why did she only have a sense of loss at the knowledge that Cara had just taken from the TP?

"Every last drop," Stephen confirmed. "Brianna and the others are just going to have to organize their revolution some other way. and you still haven't answered the question of what you've decided to do about yourself."

"Oh." She rubbed her neck, massaging away the whiplash of the last two conversations. She really needed a few days to process everything that happened. And cookies. Cookies would be nice, with some hot cocoa. Maybe Mrs. O'Connell would make some real cookies, if Irene asked her nicely. A quiet evening in sounded like a good start on the break she needed before the inevitable next bit of excitement started. "I think I'm going to stick around here for awhile. This isn't where I see myself working for the rest of my life, because, let's face it, I can do a lot better than teaching in a community college. Maybe a few semesters would be good, though. Give me a chance to put some roots down and establish a routine, figure out where I really want to go next."

Stephen was nodding, and they were almost at the classroom. "So you're not going to move back into the Refuge?"

"I think you'll see me around enough that you won't know that I haven't," she answered. She pulled Stephen to a stop outside the classroom. A quick look inside showed that the room was nearly as full as it was going to get, and all the students—every single one—was biding their time before the class started by playing on their phones. At least she knew they weren't playing Balloon Busters. Whether the replacement game was any better, though, remained to be seen. "So, I did learn something interesting in the meeting."

"Yeah?"

"You're going to need some gen ed credits to get your major, right?" Off Stephen's confused nod, she continued, "How do you feel about signing up for an art class?"

His brow pinched tight as he tried to figure out what she was getting at. "Art? I can barely draw stick figures. Art is, like, the one class that I routinely failed in high school even before I started to break out. Why would I sign up for a class I can't pass?"

"Because you're the leader of the Tomorrow People, and I have a really good lead on a person who's about to break out. Do you really want her to go through what you went through?"

Stephen blanched, and Irene knew she'd hit her mark. Of course he didn't want anyone to go through what he did, in any sense of the experience. They were shaping a new world now, one where no one would have to. It was going to take work, though, a lot of work. It was going to take challenging expectations and making an active effort to see past the paranoia and fear they'd all rightly earned. It was going to take risks with trusting people. In the end, she hoped, what they would build was a better tomorrow for all of them.

"Fine," he agreed.

Patting his arm, she commended him. "I knew you'd see the light."

With that, she entered her classroom and waited while Stephen took his seat in the front row. "Welcome back," she spoke to the class. "I know we've missed a couple classes and we have a lot of material to catch up on, but I want to take a break from the lesson plan today." She heard a rustle sweep through the room, the sound of backpack zippers opening, paper shuffling, people shifting in their seats. The red-headed girl was sitting in the second row today and she already had her notebook and pen out, open, and ready to go. Irene took a seat on the teacher's table and looked out over her class. They'd all put all their phones away without a single comment from her. This was a different world, already. "It may not seem like it, but even humans are evolving. That manifests in all kinds of ways, big and small. The world you live in today isn't going to be the world you live in tomorrow. People have to change."

[Cute,] she heard Stephen think at her. [Real cute.]

Irene ignored him. Her students were taking notes. She'd hardly said anything yet, but her students were listening to her and writing stuff down. "So, today," she continued, "let's take some time to focus on the role biology plays in who we are." Unbidden, she thought of the aliens that were incubating inside an office building in New York City, and how they needed violent energy to hatch, but then would grow into being that did nothing worse than peaceably travel the galaxy.

This was a topic she really had some opinions on. Maybe she'd propose a whole class on it for next year, if the school let her. Now that she had her class's attention, she jumped down from the desk, picked up a piece of chalk, and began writing on the board. Who knew how much they'd understand right now, but at least she could point them in the right direction for later.

She listened to the soft squeals of the chalk on the board and the scratches of her students writing. The hum of their concentrated thoughts pressed against the back of her mind. In between one sentence and the next, she allowed a small pause so that the happiness that was building up inside could find an outlet in a small smile. While this was the last place Irene ever expected to end up, she rather looked forward to where she was going to go next.

END

A/N: The first season of TheTomorrow People (2013) was based loosely on the first serial of the 1973 series, "The Slaves of Jedikiah." Many, many references in the season harken back to the '73 show as a whole, and this serial in particular-enough so that it's easy to imagine the writers continuing to draw their inspiration from the earlier serials had they been granted more seasons. This story is my attempt at adapting the first serial of '73's second series, "The Blue and the Green," for the '13 crew. While the inclusion of aliens into the '13 series is a contentious issue, I'd like to think that if we did have aliens, they wouldn't (at least initially) be the bad guys.