Per the request Lisa had texted me, I made my way to the Arcadia High newspaper room during my morning free period. I pushed open the door to reveal a decent-size classroom with its floor covered by several large, teacher-style desks, each topped with a computer. Newspaper clippings of every size and description, all seemingly from the Arcadia High Advisor, covered the dark green walls. Yes, Arcadia High had a paper called the Advisor. Apparently alliteration was a key tenet of high school journalism.

Not at all to my surprise, Lisa sat comfortably behind one of the computers, clacking away at the keyboard with aplomb. She waved to me as I entered.

"Hiya, Taylor," she said, the same easy grin as always stretched across her face. "Small world, huh?"

I quirked an eyebrow. "You actually did worm your way into writing that article?"

She laughed. "What, did you think I wouldn't? I'm a woman of my word." She waggled her fingers over the keyboard. "And believe me, this is gonna be juicy, let me tell you. Guess who got the scoop on which local business are fronting for the Empire?"

"I guess I should've known better than to doubt," I said. "But what kind of high school newspaper is going to run an article like that? Isn't that like serious investigative journalism?"

Lisa tapped her forehead. "Well, the club president really wants to go to college for journalism, and he kept harping on about how he wanted something really serious, So, I figured I'd give it to him. The guy's either crazy or self-interested enough to run it. Hey, maybe both, right? I don't judge."

"And he really hasn't figured out you don't go here?"

Lisa chuckled and shook her head. "Hey, it's a big school. Plus, he's totally into me, so that might help a bit, y'know?"

I shook my head. "You are shameless, do you know that?" I said with mock scorn.

"Guilty as charged, I'm afraid," Lisa said. "Anyways, I wanted to let you know that I've got a lead on the case I'll run down during the day. If it pans out, I think we may be able to clean things up this afternoon. Got time to swing by the office after school?"

"C'mon, you already know I have nothing but time," I said. "It's a pretty light week as far as homework goes."

Lisa beamed. "Great! I don't expect there'll be too much to this case, so hopefully we can wrap it up today or tomorrow. Missing persons stuff isn't usually nearly as exciting as it sounds, even one with a bit of a wrinkle like this."

"I hope so," I said. "The smoother the better, as far as I'm concerned. My nerves still haven't quite recovered from that run-in with Hookwolf and Lung."

"I've got some pretty vivid memories of that myself," Lisa said with a grimace. "But all's well that ends well, right?"

I nodded, then shifted on one foot. This next part was going to be a little awkward, but I wanted to say it.

Lisa quirked an eyebrow. "C'mon, whatever it is, out with it. You know I hate the waiting."

"I, uh, just wanted to say thanks," I said. "You know, for everything, and for being my friend. A few months ago, I never would've expected to be in a place this much better mentally, you know? I actually enjoy getting up in the morning now. So, thanks."

Lisa's smile was warm and entirely genuine. "Hey, it's nothing, really. I'm the one who should be thanking you for providing me with such a kick-ass partner. Like I said, doing all this on my own was tough, like really tough. Having you to count on's made a my life a hell of a lot better, believe me."

"Thanks," I said. "Sorry to get all mushy on you like that, but I've been meaning to tell you."

Lisa nodded. "I appreciate it, really. Now, with that said, what's the juicy gossip? This is high school, you gotta have some good stuff for me. I might take up a society column on the side, you know."

We chatted back and forth until the chime of the bell, at which point I walked Lisa to her preferred discreet point of exit before heading to my class.

Later that day, after the final bell, I forged through the sea of kids flooding Arcadia's main exit and debouched onto the comparatively vast expanse of the flat courtyard. A brisk walk carried me across the intervening blocks to our office building, where I entered and snuck in the rear, as usual. As I hurried down to the basement, I set up my usual insectoid sensor network, the formation of which had now become almost an afterthought. In the passageway, I hurriedly pulled on my costume, unlocked the rear door with a twist of my key, and stepped through, pulling it shut behind me.

I found myself greeted by an empty office. In fact, a dark and empty office, illuminated only by the flickering yellow-orange light of the exposed incandescent bulb which hung from the ceiling in the hallway behind me. Our desks threw harsh shadows against the wan facing of the office walls. On the far side of the office, the frosted glass which looked onto our waiting room had turned murky with shadow. Being in the basement as it was, even the waiting room got very little natural light, and our office got almost none at all.

Lisa wasn't here? I frowned, and stepped over to the light switch, careful to use my bugs as a sort of fall-avoidance system, mapping out the floor to ensure that I didn't trip over any unseen objects lurking admits the shadow. Even if no one else was there to see me go down, it would still feel pretty humiliating. Plus, Lisa would undoubtedly know with one look at me, and I'd never hear the end of it.

I flicked on the switch for the overhead light, and blinked as our bulbous ceiling lamp shone out, bathing the room in its customary level of illumination.

I opened the door to the waiting room, just to check if Lisa might possibly have fallen asleep on the old love seat we had there. To hear her tell it, that had happened at least a couple of times since she began her career. The waiting room, however, proved to be just as deserted as the office and almost as dark, lit only by the gray light of a skyscraper's shadow filtering in through a tiny slit window set almost at the ceiling in the wall above the exterior door. The love seat sat entirely empty of any snoozing detectives.

I closed the waiting room door and perched on my desk as I puzzled over the question of Lisa's whereabouts. It was possible, of course, that she had just run out to grab something to eat, or perhaps to use the building's bathroom, but wouldn't she have left a note? Simply up and vanishing didn't seem like her at all. What's more, I would have expected her to leave the lights on, since she would have known I would be on my way.

I shook my head in an effort to clear away the speculation. I felt ridiculous, and more than a little embarrassed. Lisa didn't owe me a minute-by-minute explanation of her activities. I was old enough - she could reasonably expect me to be able to take care of myself if something had come up. She was on an investigation, after all, and of course that took priority. I was acting way too clingy for my own good.

Resolved to pack away such pathetic thoughts, I retrieved my backpack from the back passageway and, after locking both the exterior door and the door to the waiting room, pulled out my Algebra II textbook to get started on my homework. Math exercises lacked somewhat as a substitute for a missing persons case, but I might as well make the most of the time while I waited. Lisa would undoubtedly show up soon, hopefully to fill me in on a major breakthrough.

I passed nearly two hours in the office. After about an hour and a half, I had exhausted the supply of even my most mind-numbingly tedious homework, and had to spend the last half-hour preparing for a Chemistry test coming up next week. While I now found myself more academically prepared for the upcoming challenges than I had been in some time, that did nothing to relieve the tiny, yet very real ball of unease which had begun to nibble ever-so-slightly at my stomach.

After two hours, I had to accept that whatever had delayed Lisa meant she wouldn't be able to put in an appearance at all this afternoon. There didn't seem to be much more point to sitting around the office instead of simply calling it quits and heading home.

I retrieved my cellphone and switched it on. A smooth electronic power-on chime full the emptiness of the office for a moment. As soon as the startup screen cleared, I checked my messages. No texts. Normally, that wouldn't exactly surprise me, since Lisa and Brandish were the only people to even know of the phone's existence. Lisa typically preferred to communicate with me face-to-face, and I couldn't even imagine a universe in which Carol Dallon might send me a text message.

Under the circumstances, though, it seemed as though Lisa might have sent me a text explaining the sudden change in plans. I could readily admit that I didn't have much experience with the world of adolescent texting, but I was given to understand that any teenager worth their salt could fire off text messages at the speed and regularity of a machine gun.

There I went with the negative thoughts again. With some effort, I forced them down once again, and hoped that this time they might stay bottled up. I'd practically never sent a text in my life, so how could I possibly justify moping over not getting one? It was completely absurd, if I were being honest with myself.

If this is what texting did to teenagers, maybe all the complaints I heard about it had some merit after all. Anyways, nobody could stay chained to their cellphone 24/7. There were any number of reasons why Lisa might not have had the time or inclination to send a text. I paged into my phone's settings, switched it to mute, and stuffed it into the deepest recesses of my backpack. Even though she hadn't texted me yet, that didn't preclude her from sending one later. Bringing the phone home could get uncomfortable very quickly if Dad found out about it, so I'd just have to make sure he didn't. With a case going, I couldn't afford not to stay in touch with Lisa. We had been in enough life-or-death scrapes recently for me to know she might need to be bailed out of some pretty ugly situations, and no doubt she'd rather call me than New Wave. I didn't want to text her just yet, though. That might come across as desperation, rather than friendly concern.

After having stored my phone, I swept the area with my bugs one last time. Nada. Wherever Lisa was, it definitely wasn't here. I switched off the lights, locked the door, and hoped that nothing had gone wrong.

I managed to get through the night at home without Dad sniffing out the cellphone I had illicitly smuggled onto the premises. It turned out that spending the entirety of the night and the next morning in a queasy state of unease at the prospect of discovery had been entirely pointless, as my phone remained as silent as the grave. My uneasiness subsided after leaving home in the sunny warmth of a summer morning, only to gradually increase throughout the school day as Lisa's smirking face was nowhere to be found within Arcadia High. With the ringing of the final bell, I hurried to the office with an alacrity even greater than my usual quickened step.

Before I even arrived in the back entrance, my bugs had effectively confirmed what I had feared, but I had to see with my own eyes. As I cracked the back door open, once again, darkness greeted me. The office was completely empty once again.

At this point, my thoughts had shifted from nagging insecurity to genuine concern for Lisa. I had no problem believing that she might drop off the face of the earth for an afternoon, but for a full two days? That just couldn't be. Something must have happened to her.

My stomach twisted into a knot, and I fumbled around for my cellphone. I opened my contacts, and dialed Lisa's number. The call rang five times and went straight to voicemail.

"Hiya, you've reached Lisa. Sorry to deprive you of my brilliant conversation, but I'm not around right now. Leave a message."

I left a message asking Lisa to call me. I didn't hold out much hope of it amounting to anything, but I might as well.

I left the office and hurried out the passageway and down the block to Lisa's apartment building. At this point, I felt that trying to find her at home couldn't possibly come off as overly clingy. At the entrance, I halted next to the box of buzzers labeled by apartment. I located "Wilbourne, L." And pressed it. No response came. I waited another two minutes, then pressed again, for a full five seconds this time. Still, no chime came, and the door remained resolutely locked. I waited another several minutes, but this time swept the apartment with whichever bugs I could find scattered around it. I found no sign of Lisa anywhere. The apartment appeared entirely devoid of human forms. The part of me that had watched too many procedurals almost relaxed a bit at that, as it meant no sign of bled-out bodies sprawled on bathroom tile. I tried the bell one last time, this time for ten full seconds, and felt slightly psychotic. No answer. Lisa wasn't home, either.

My queasiness only increased. Something must have happened to her. At the very least, she would have texted me or messaged me on PHO by now. Wouldn't she? She had to be in trouble. Anything could have happened while she had been out investigating Rebecca's case, especially given our recent acrimonious run-ins with the Empire. I hated to even think about the possibilities, but it had to be done.

What were my options? I couldn't imagine involving the police. I could try to keep the secret of our powers from them, but I didn't imagine myself to be much of an equal match for a police detective when it came to a game of mental cat-and-mouse. That kind of stuff was Lisa's field, not mine. I could go to New Wave or the Protectorate as Flutter, but they had their hands full with the explosion of gang violence between the ABB and Empire Eighty-Eight. Would they even listen to me? I didn't think Brandish or Glory Girl would blow me off, but given the dearth of available evidence of foul play, how could I justify asking them to get involved?

No, for now, it seemed I would have to proceed by myself, at least until I could uncover evidence concrete enough to let me feel confident that I could actually secure outside assistance. My shoulders tensed. I normally left most of the investigation to Lisa, and for good reason. I didn't know the first thing about the nuts and bolts of detective work, and with Lisa gone, I had nobody to learn from. The few crime or detective novels I had read didn't exactly offer much in the way of helpful instruction, either.

I straightened my shoulders, which had drawn taut. I would make it work. With Lisa depending on me, how could I do anything else?

I resolved to start with our office. Given my inability to win entrance into Lisa's apartment building, plus my lack of a key to her actual apartment, there seemed to be no possible way for me to search her apartment for any evidence which might have been left there. As such, the office really was the only choice.

A few minutes later, I pushed open the back door to the office, having once again changed in the passageway.

I flipped on the lights and looked around the office, not entirely sure of where to start. Rather uncharacteristically, no papers cluttered the top of Lisa's desk. She must have returned whatever files she had on this case to her cabinets.

A row of ugly battleship-gray metal filing cabinets squatted against the wall behind Lisa's desk. Laptops, folded shut, adorned the tops of three of them. I never had asked Lisa why exactly she had so many laptops. I resolved to find out once I managed to locate her and put this whole mess behind us.

The filing cabinets were labeled alphabetically, from left to right. Hopefully Lisa had managed to restore them to more-or-less working order after the havoc wreaked by Ms. Readman's paper tornado.

What had the woman's name been? I cast my mind back to two days before, when she had come to our office to ask for help. "Rebecca Heaylen". I pulled open the filing cabinet which advertised itself as containing the files for "H". Inside, the drawer bulged with a thick row of paper-stuffed manila folders, each labeled with the relevant last name. I pushed the last of the Gs out of the way to reach the Hs, and thumbed through, looking for "Heaylen". Lisa's files proved more comprehensive than I would have thought, and I had to sort at least twenty or thirty folders out of the way before reaching my target. As I lifted it out, the folder behind it, newly revealed, caught my eye.

This folder read "Hebert, Taylor". I recalled my very first-and extremely discomfiting-meeting with Lisa, where I had been amazed to find that she actually did have a file on me.

My hand hovered over the folder. Was this really the time?

I lifted it out along with Rebecca's folder, unable to resist the temptation to see just what Lisa had found on me, back before we had become friends.

If I had known beforehand what the impact of that decision would be, I might well have left it sitting there on the shelf and spared myself what was to come.

I dropped the two folders onto my desk, and pushed my folder out of the way for the moment. As curious as I was, the issue at hand-Lisa's disappearance-came first. I settled myself into my desk chair with a sigh. As always, its rather ramshackle appearance belied its comfort.

I opened Lisa's file on Rebecca and spread its contents over the desk. I cast an eye over them and did my best to apply a detective mindset. Regrettably, but unsurprisingly, the picture provided by Rebecca was not inside. Lisa had undoubtedly carried it with her when she went out searching for our target, so I could hardly be surprised at its absence. This might even serve as confirmation of my suspicions. If she'd had the picture on her at the time of what increasingly looked like her kidnapping, that suggested she had been actively looking for Jason at the time. If I could simply figure out where she might have been looking, maybe I could find her.

Of course, having the picture to help identify Jason if I saw him would have been nice, as he might also have knowledge of what had happened to Lisa. For all I knew, he was the one who had kidnapped her in some misguided effort to conceal whatever he had gotten himself involved with.

I cast my mind back to our meeting with Rebecca on the day before last. I had seen the picture, after all, and so I attempted to form it in my mind. Much to my surprise, I came up with a reasonable approximation of what Jason had looked like. Or, at least, what I thought he had looked like. For all I knew, every single detail could be a complete fabrication through a mischievous trick of memory. With that said, I felt confident in my mental picture. Perhaps all that time I had spent working around Lisa had sharpened my detective skills without my knowledge.

Having resolved the issue of the missing picture, I went on to consider the files which actually were present inside of the folder. The first was a simple one-page dossier on Rebecca herself, which no doubt had been whipped up by Lisa prior to the meeting. The dossier contained a few notes on Rebecca's personality and background, along with "Trustworthy - possibly deluded?" scrawled messily in blue script at the top of the page. Under that sheet of paper, I found two printouts of articles from the Brockton Morning Mirror from the about disappearances of homeless persons from Brockton in the past five years. I scanned the articles, but no obvious connection leapt off the page at me. Apparently one hadn't leapt off at Lisa, either, as she'd scrawled an "X" in vivid red ink at the upper-right corner of each page. Thankfully, it seemed that my failure to divine some sort of connection had not been the result of woefully inadequate detecting ability.

Past those articles were several from various news outlets throughout New England, also dealing with the vanishing of homeless persons under unusual circumstances. Red Xs also adorned several of these, but others had been marked with a blue question mark, or a green check mark. Unfortunately, my emphatically human sleuthing skills weren't able to pick out the thread woven between these articles by Lisa's superhuman intuition. I tried not to beat myself up over it, as doing so would be about as ridiculous as Lisa faulting herself for being unable to steer a fly through a crack in a window. Having reminded myself of this patently logical conclusion, I went right on kicking myself for my failure to put the pieces together. Thinkers had a way of making you feel bad about yourself just by existing. Somehow, I couldn't help but feel that I should be able to make the connections anyways. Reminding yourself of a power's existence became very difficult when the only effect of that power was to make someone appear incredibly intelligent.

I reluctantly admitted defeat with the articles, and slid them out of the way as well. Thankfully, the last item in the folder proved to be of much greater utility to me.

I unfolded a map of Brockton Bay which seemed to have come from the city's tourist information center, according to the branding in the corner. I marveled at the idea of people actually willingly coming to our gang-ridden mess of a city for pleasure, and unfolded the map across my desk. Though, if it were aimed at cape-chasing tourists, the desire to visit became much easier to understand. Say what they might, nobody could deny that Brockton Bay had a thriving cape scene, and one that wasn't too likely to be lethal to visitors. At least, not yet.

I shuddered briefly at the idea of being a tourist attraction, and resolved not to mention it to Lisa once I found her, as I could already see her gleefully remodeling us into a meet-and-greet curiosity. I didn't allow myself the weakness of doubting whether I would find her. She was out there in Brockton right now, somewhere. All I had to do was figure out where.

To that end, I turned my attention back to the map. As I lacked the ability to snatch deductions from the ether, I looked for any marks from the person who did have that ability. The front of the map, which depicted the outskirts of the city as they merged into its northern half, remained entirely blank. Much to my gratified surprise, noticing Winslow on the map didn't so much as make me twitch an eyebrow. In so many ways, my time there felt almost like another life now, though it had been only a couple of months ago that Lisa had dragged me up out of that hell. If she really had gotten herself into trouble, now I would repay that life-changing favor.

I flipped the map over, and finally found something helpful.

The back of the map depicted the heart of Brockton Bay; namely, Downtown and the Docks. A neighborhood near the waterfront, but not properly part of the Docks, had been circled in bright red marker, undoubtedly by Lisa. The circle encompassed perhaps three to four city blocks. Lisa hadn't left any comments to further elucidate me, but I could hardly mistake her intent.

Clearly, she had thought she would find our missing man here, and had gone to look for him. I studied the neighborhood on the map. Whatever had happened to her must have happened within the boundaries of this circle.

With the map out of the way and the various files and photos scattered about the desk, the folder now lay empty. That hardly mattered, though, now that I knew where to look. My resolve hardened.

As I turned to leave, my gaze fell once more upon the folder marked with my name. Curiosity nagged at me once again, tugging my hand toward the folder. It would be much less awkward to look now, before Lisa's return. If I was being honest, I just had to know. I surrendered to the impulse with a stern injunction to myself to take only a very brief look at the contents. Somewhere out there, Lisa needed my help.

I flipped open the manila folder. Unsurprisingly, my file lacked the thickness of Rebecca's, and contained only a sole sheet of paper. In fact, I would have been worried to find that it had the same size. I didn't want to think there was that much information on me just floating about, ready to be snatched up by any discerning trawler.

My eyes traversed the page, which appeared to be the same one Lisa had perused at our first meeting. I felt some relief as I scanned the few unremarkable paragraphs of backstory undoubtedly gleaned from local police and hospital records. Secure in the intention to let this be a lesson to my conscience about letting me give in to insecurity, I moved to replace the paper in the folder. As I did, the light illuminated what appeared to be some scribbling on the back.

I flipped the paper over. On the back, Lisa had scrawled in unruly print: Possible suicide risk? Keep an eye on her.

Those two short, simple sentences seared my eyes with the force of one of Purity's blasts. A queasy churn writhed into life in my stomach.

Lisa was my only friend, the only person who had taken the trouble to really, genuinely reach out to me in the time since Emma had turned on me. Thanks to her, I could genuinely look forward to each new day, instead of gritting my teeth and barely tolerating its slow passage. What's more, I had thought that I'd found someone who genuinely enjoyed my company, too.

I let the piece of paper slip out of my hands and drift back down to my desk. My fists clenched.

Had this all been some fucking lie, just because Lisa thought I was mentally unstable? I wanted to believe that she couldn't have managed to feign interest for the months we'd been working together now, but I knew Lisa too well to believe that. My mouth twisted bitterly. Or maybe I should say that I knew Lisa's powers too well to believe that, since apparently I knew nothing at all about her. Lisa was more than capable of stringing along a gullible loser like me, if she wanted to. In fact, her power was practically made for it. With this much time to work on me, she likely could have gotten me to believe absolutely anything she wanted.

The slippery thing in my stomach thrashed with redoubled agitation. I didn't know whether I wanted to throw something or throw up. I should have known better than to think that anything could have really changed for me. Getting powers hadn't made my life any better. Why should meeting Lisa be any different?

My fingers shook as I snatched the paper back off the desk, compacted it with several quick, ugly folds, and stuffed it inside my costume. Even if Lisa had been treating me as some psychological experiment all this time, I had to go looking for her. Part of me still insisted that I search for her because she was my friend, and she needed help. I still almost wanted to believe that to be my motivation, but the part of me which now seethed with a bilious mixture of emotions needed to demand an explanation face-to-face.

I grabbed the map, strode out the back door of the office, and pulled it shut behind me without looking back.