John ran. He wasn't much of a runner to be quite frank, but it was the thing to do. As soon as he made it past the prison's walls he sprinted and didn't look back. Then after a minute or so of that he fell into a jog and could only keep that up for another few adrenaline-pushed limits before stopping altogether and grabbing his knees.

John wheezed, huffed, he panted, he had to stop to catch his breath. Lacking a mouth or nose with which to properly breath like a human, air was sucked through the holes along his body. All of them. John was well used to this by now, it wasn't something he really stopped to think about anymore. A phenomenon that John was unfamiliar with, however, is he could feel air being sucked into the hole he had left behind in his cell. That was odd, John was well used to the manner in which he now breathed air, but he hadn't ever been able to breath through the holes he left in space. Or, not that he could remember at least. But he had also never been this out of breath before. He was, as said before, not much of a runner.

Curious. This was curious. John would have to keep that in mind.

He forced himself to return to the moment though. He was, after all, still on the run. Still in trouble. Still, despite it all, a mortal in mortal danger.

John turned back. Looked into the distance as far as he could make out. But he saw nothing. It was hard to see around the cell, but the bodies were still where he'd left them.

He still had a bit of time. No need to rush things now. Rush, panic, and he would get sloppy. No, no let's take this nice and easy. There was no need to be afraid. After all, though he may still be mortal, he still was not quite human. And on that thought John rested his stability.

He continued away from the prison, but now he did not run. It was a leisurely walk, a stroll as he let his aching legs take a rest, of a sort, it would be enough. And as he went, he began to draw circles in the air. He tried to keep them large, large enough for himself to maneuver through at least, but a great many would be there just to allow him to keep an eye on things. This was the part John was looking forward to the most.

Jessica Jones sat at her desk, typing at her computer. Matt, Luke, and Colleen watched her, waiting for her to do anything else. She just wanted to make sure she had everything ready, and wasn't about to be spectacularly wrong.

"So uh, what are we doing here?" Matt asked.

"Talking about shit..." This should be fine. "I looked up the name you guys gave us, Daniel Berkhart."

"Find anything?" Luke asked.

"Yeah, he's got a bit of history that you might be interested in knowing."

Jessica pulled up a video, hit play, and spun her laptop around. Luke and Colleen leaned in to watch.

"Oh my god!" Colleen put a hand to her mouth. "Oh my god!"

"Someone might need to describe this to me," Matt said.

"...Severed head," said Luke.

The lines on Matt's forehead tightened. "What?"

"It's a severed head."

The voice of a stern and gruff man came from the laptop. "Cause of death?"

A second voice answered it, this one belonging to a young, but professional woman. "I think it's obvious."

"No, they want it to seem obvious. Big difference."

There was an auditory sting and flashes of violent images. Spattered blood, a raised knife, dark bathtubs full of black liquid. Then was footage of a guy in a big brown coat walking down a well lit hallway with a woman in a black pants suit.

"What is this?" Luke mouthed.

Jessica motioned for him to keep watching.

"We've got a serial killer on our hands," came a voice disconnected from the two people talking.

"Who would want to start something in a small town like this?" asked a second, unrelated disconnected voice.

"What are you going to do about this?" asked the pants suit woman.

"Whatever I have to," said the brown coat man.

"Whoever's doing this knows the police are after him, he's toying with us."

"He's bound to slip up somewhere. No one's that good."

Another sting, more images. The footage settled on a man's face in the dark, staring quietly into the camera.

"I welcome the challenge," he said.

The screen went to a smoky texture before words flew onto the screen. 'The River's Secrets' 'Tuesdays 8 PM' 'Only on TBS'.

Luke blinked. Colleen blinked. Matt's eyes couldn't be seen behind his dark glasses, but he still gave pause.

"Well," Luke started. "I'm glad you found a new show."

"Yeah, yeah..." Colleen said. "What was that?"

Jessica sighed. "The guy, Berkhart, he's uh... he's a Hollywood asshole."

"An actor?" Matt asked.

"I think he wanted to be. Looking over his IMDB, 2 acting credits, couple of student films I've never heard of, and a dozen credits for practical effects on various daytime dramas. The head at the beginning. He did that."

"The hell?" Colleen had her phone pulled out. "He did the effects for the Captain America mini-series?"

"Yep. He was working in LA right up until the snap happened. Was on a production that had to cancel cause of that shit. Then he disappears, and his name doesn't crop up in the public eye until... now."

"Weird."

"So," Luke said. "What does this mean?"

Jessica looked at him, looked at Colleen, looked at Matt, each one waiting and watching her.

"Nothing. Doesn't mean anything cause that's all done. Just thought you'd wanna know who tried to have you all killed is all."

"You sure?" Matt said. "He's still out there somewhere, we might want to try and track him down before he tries something else."

"His goons are all in jail, his secret hideout is busted, and all of his property has been taken by the state of New York. What else is he going to do?"

Jessica could feel his gaze boring into her, which was a weird feeling to get from a blind man. She'd been careful to not let a lie slip in there, about what had happened.

"If you say so," he eventually said. "Thanks for the heads up then."

With that he turned and left the apartment. Jessica could hear his cane tapping along the floor on the way back to the elevator.

Colleen nodded. "Thanks Jess. Sorry it uh... well, thanks." With that she turned and left as well.

Luke watched the two of them leave. And he didn't. He turned to look at Jessica.

"Are you sure?"

She blinked. "About what."

"That Berkhart's gone. That this is all over."

Jessica looked back at him. Luke Cage, the quiet one. He had a way about him, made Jess feel like he could see right through everything she did.

She sighed, then gave a nod. "I'm sure," she said quietly.

He gave her a second. Then nodded back. "If you say it's so, then it's so."

"...Yeah. Obviously."

"You did good. Finding all this out so fast. Always finding new ways to impress."

"Thanks. I mean it wasn't that hard, just took a solid internet connection and 4 hours of sleep."

"How about you get some more of that then."

"That's the plan. That and drink all of this behind me."

"I mean it, by the way. You did really good. We wouldn't have gotten any of this done without you."

Jessica just nodded. Just nodded.

"I'll catch you later?"

"Yeah. It might be a good time, if neither of us are working."

Luke gave a chuckle and then turned and left as well. Jessica was left alone in her apartment. Another done case. Another dead body. How the hell did she always end up feeling worse when they weren't her fault.

John sat at the bottom of a chilly pond. He had found, in this experiment, that while he was good at passively taking in a lot of information at once, focusing on actively performing multiple actions at once was much, much harder. When he had first dipped a foot into the water, he realized the hole on his arch would quickly drain the pond as water began to pour from one of the holes he kept floating in the air around him. So, while submerged, he had to make sure that all of the holes on his body led to other holes on his body. But, however, while he was doing that, he was also focusing on taking in air from a hole that wasn't on his body, pulling that air directly into him and bypassing the holes on his physical body altogether. Though, to be clear, he still would have to exhale carbon dioxide from that same hole.

John was, in short, on the precipice of underwater breathing. It would take quite a bit of practice to accomplish. For the third time since he started this, John fell back on the reflex of breathing through his face and sucked in some scummy pond water and immediately paddled to the surface and coughed it back up.

That was probably enough practice for today.

He clawed back onto the muddy bank by the pond and shook himself off. Let what drips of water remained fall through his holes and hit the ground somewhere else. Back at his camp, under a shady tree and by the thin mattress he kept on a plastic tarp and under a canopy, a white towel was waiting for him. He went over the last of the water still clinging to him and then redressed in the white underclothes and orange jumpsuit that the prison had provided for him. While such state of dress would certainly do something for his dignity, the jumpsuit was useful for keeping him warm at night even without covers.

The penitentiary was surrounded by 5 miles of woodland in every direction. There was a road that would lead one out back towards the closest city, but John wasn't interested in that. Not yet. He spent his days wandering around the woods, heading towards nowhere in particular, well, except for, his target was usually somewhere he hadn't been. As he walked he would draw circles, make holes in his path, he would leave a trail of them behind him like breadcrumbs.

Of course the guards and local police quickly realized this, they tried to use them to follow his path, and usually when that happened, John would draw one last circle and step through it and appear somewhere else in his little trail entirely, usually on the other side of the compound. And he would continue his walk somewhere else where he wouldn't be disturbed.

Then at night, he would rest his tired legs and shift his focus to inside the penitentiary. The process for nights was a lot slower than the process he took during the days. It was rhythmic, mechanical, it was almost a quite boring process, but John could find something to appreciate in how repetitive it became. How it worked is that he would sit down, and put a hole in front of him, and then he would reach into that hole, and he would expand a hole in the prison, from wherever he had left off last, and poke a finger through that hole, and draw a small hole in front of it, then close the hole his finger had come through as small as he could make it. Then he would maneuver his finger back in out through the hole he had just made and the process would repeat itself.

With this method he had gone out from his cell and into the prison's ventilation and all throughout the complex without being noticed by a soul. He had a specific goal – a destination, in mind to make sure he could access first, which was the mail room, but keeping an eye on the entirety of the prison, and making sure that he had holes ready to go everywhere, was equally if not moreso important. It was also, if he would be allowed to speak on behalf of his own comfort for a moment, exceptionally convenient to be able to grab and take objects of comfort from around the prison. Like some sort of house fairy spiriting away such things in the night. That was an enjoyable thought, picturing himself in such a fanciful light.

Though his work was methodical, it was also slow. Tonight, he was going to try and make it across the recess yard. If he could make it to the window 20 feet over the basketball hoop in the yard, and more importantly get it open and move through it, he could skip 4 doors and a flight of stairs.

John in that moment allowed his mind to wander. Or, rather, no, it wasn't his mind wandering, it was his attention, his consciousness wandered and took in what sights it, or he, could see around.

The prison guards had been sent out again to look for him. On many a night, quite like this, John could watch them stumble and wander in vain attempts to find him. He could see the fear clutch at their hearts, wandering through the woods at night, the way only lit by a flashlight and surrounded on all sides by extensions of John's power. That was always fun, always worth the time. Tonight however, they'd gotten lucky. By random chance, they were wandering in the same direction as John, straight towards him. They would not come to his location for another 20... 18 minutes maximum. But he couldn't be here while they were. As fun as it was to watch the guards in their fear, it was a lot less fun when they actually had a chance in succeeding in their goal.

So John sighed an impossible sigh, began to pack up his ramshackle campsite, found a nice, quiet spot on the opposite side of the prison, drew a large hole and stepped through to it. Having to make his bed again meant that he likely wasn't making it to that window tonight. And that was a shame. But there was always tomorrow.

Colleen was perched on the roof of a two-story strip mall. Kept in the dark, above the street lamps that cast a dull orange down on the empty pavement below.

Though she was less so perched and more, seated. She sat on the lip of the building, dangling and idly swinging her legs off the side. She tried to focus on the city streets, tried to keep her senses open to signs of danger, things that she, the Iron Fist, should deal with.

It was hard to take her mind off of that image though. The thought of Berkhart. Bleeding. Gasping. Fading. That gash across his chest. That was awful.

"Hey."

Colleen jumped. "Oh, Jesus! Matt!"

Daredevil stood behind her. For a split second she was afraid he was there to kick her teeth in. But, no, he seemed pretty chill. At the moment at least.

"Sorry. D- Daredevil? DD? Double-D?"

He stared at- through her. "Just Matt is fine."

"So, hey, what's up? Did you need something?" She thought about it for a second. "Wait how did you find me?"

"Heard you."

"Heard me, what?"

"Thinking."

"What the hell does that mean?"

"Conscious thoughts aren't – entirely internal. There are tiny spasms of muscle in the throat that synchronize with – vocalize what you're thinking."

"And you heard that!?"

He stared. "Not at first."

"Holy shit. Does that mean you can hear people's thoughts?"

"No. But I could hear that you were thinking pretty hard about something."

"Christ." Colleen rubbed her eyes.

Matt walked over. Colleen didn't even hear his boots crunch against the roof's gravel. He shuffled off the edge of the building and sat on the lip next to her. "If it's something better suited for a confessional, I know a guy who's good with this kind of thing."

"No. No. It's just – you ever feel like you really, really messed something up? And someone got hurt cause of it?"

There was something unnerving about those never blinking eyes. Colleen knew Matt, she could tell he was trying to be sympathetic. But every contemplative pause felt like he was looking into her soul. Even when he wasn't even looking at her.

"Is this about Danny?" he asked.

"Danny?" Colleen started. "Uh- Yeah! Yeah, Danny!"

Okay that time he probably did mean to give her a stare.

"Well, okay. Truth be told, things aren't going over great with him either."

"Have you guys seen each other? Since, you know..."

"No," Colleen sighed. "He's coming back soon but... New York is such a different place these days."

"I don't think that's the reason you're so nervous."

"Nervous? Who said I was nervous?"

"Your heartrate speeds up every time you talk about him."

"Maybe I should just go to a confessional."

He put his hands up. The slightest of smiles played at his lips. "No judgement. We're just two friends, sitting on a roof, talking about our lives."

"Well, I don't know." Colleen rubbed her face. "He asked me if we were still together."

"And what'd you say?"

"I... hung up on him."

"Oof."

"Yeah. Yeah." Colleen sighed. "I mean I don't – I don't know. I guess, probably, New York isn't a different place. I'm just, the same. And everything else changed around me."

Matt didn't have anything to say to that. Colleen had the suspicion that she might've hit something sensitive in him too.

"You know I was – I was reading an article the other day. Some like personal story about a guy whose wife got blipped. I think they split up at the end of it. The point of it though was that, it was hard to tell who had it worse. The guy lived 5 years. 5 years. His wife was dead. And he just had to live through that.

"But ya know, the wife comes back. And obviously he's overjoyed to see her again. But there's so much baggage there. He's treating her like she just came back from war. To her, all that happened is she passed out for a second and now all the sudden her husband's clinging to her like the world's ending. And, like, yeah there was this part in the middle about how he'd had renovations done on the house while she was gone. She comes back, everything around her looks different, everyone around her feels different. That gap is just – so wide."

Matt nodded. "I understand."

"It's like – It's like the world got split in half. I don't even know how to talk to somehow who stuck around during that time. Let alone someone who I- who we knew so well before it happened."

Matt swallowed. "It's... my job to talk to people. To know people."

"Is it? I guess you do get up and close and personal when you're punching them."

"I meant my dayjob."

"Oh. That's right you're like, a lawyer or something?"

"Yes. I'm a criminal law trial lawyer. That means it's my job to understand and represent, to the best of my abilities, not only the situation as I understand it but my client's perspective as well. Motivations, impulses, the cogs working in the background that ultimately led to the point where they're at now. As you'd expect, half of the people I talk to were around during the blip. Half weren't. I didn't... really have a choice when it came to this kind of thing."

"Okay. Cool?"

"What I'm trying to say is, that feeling of disconnect. Maybe it's worth it to just, muscle your way through it. Nobody's on sides in this, we're all just trying to navigate the situation. Whatever it is."

"Yeah, maybe... But man, I really don't want to."

He gave her a pat on the shoulder. Though his expression didn't soften or drop or anything. "You'll do what you have to do. You're a good person. Selfless as they come."

Colleen raised an eyebrow. "What's that supposed to mean?"

Quiet. She was really starting to hate how hard Matt was to read when he was in costume.

"I've been thinking a lot about probability," he said.

"Huh?"

Matt sighed. Maybe even he was getting cold feet about this conversation.

"When the snap happened... every person had a 50/50 chance of... staying or leaving. I can't hate myself for... what happened. I can't blame myself for not being there. There was a 50% chance that I couldn't be there. But that's a 25% chance of both of us leaving. 12% that Luke doesn't make it. 6% that Jessica doesn't either. 6 percent. Imagine that. 100 times that the snap happens, it only turns out the way it did 6 of those times. That's insane, why did that have to be what we were stuck with?"

"Yeah, I – I guess."

"But you think about it another way, 50% of earth's population, that's an absurd amount. Entire countries could be wiped off the map without denting that. All of New York wouldn't amount to 1% of the population. Maybe it only makes sense that 4 people in the whole city didn't make it. Maybe it makes sense that we wouldn't get any kind of special treatment."

"I... guess...?"

"But then, if the population was split arbitrarily in half, then any groups would also be split in half. Every group would be split in half. High school student bodies, congress, the bowling club on 5th. Why weren't we the same way? Why didn't we get half, why did we lose everyone?"

"...Okay, you've lost me."

"My point is that I've been going in circles and circles about this, ever since I came back. I feel like maybe I could rest easy if at least one of us got left behind, if one of us could help keep things safe during that time. But we were all gone. No Defenders, and no Avengers, and there was nothing I could do and I just feel so..."

"Incapable?"

"...Yeah. Something like that."

"I mean, I think Captain America moved back in during the blip. Even if he didn't have backup."

Matt huffed. "Cap doesn't live here. Maybe he sleeps in Manhattan but the second some planetary threat rears his head, he's off in the... Capmobile."

Colleen snickered. "Cap-plane?"

"Cap Dune Buggy." That one got a rare smile from Matt. "I don't think Captain America is what this city needs. Or needed."

"I don't want to pass judgement." She shrugged. "We don't really know the guy."

"Yeah. Maybe. I just-"

"You feel like shit cause you were dead for 5 years when you've built your whole life around being there for people in need. I get that. We all get that. That's how all of us are feeling."

"I wish there was something I could've done."

"Yeah. Me too." A twinge twinged in Colleen's brain. She wondered if she hadn't got snapped, if she would've ended up killing a guy 5 years ago instead. But, no, she pushed that thought out of her head. "The only thing you can do in a situation like this is keep moving forward. That's what I was always taught."

"Yeah. Hard to keep moving forward when you're also trying to catch up."

She gave him a pat on the shoulder right back. "One foot at a time Murdock. We don't gotta save the world in one night. Or in one year. Or at all. Leave that to the Avengers, right?"

"...Right." He stood up.

"Danger calls?"

"Mugging. 6 blocks down. Shouldn't need more than one of us to stop."

"But if we both show up, he might shit his pants."

Matt had to force himself not to smile at that one.

Knock knock knock.

Luke Cage looked up. Tore his eyes away from the smooth jazz performance happening down on the dance floor and up towards the door of his office. He didn't have any appointments today. Wasn't expecting anyone, at least not anyone who would come straight to him.

"Come in?" he said?

The door opened. And there stood Jessica Jones, in her torn jeans and scuffed jacket and everything.

His shoulders untensed. Gave a bit of a chuckle in relief.

"Hey Jess," he said. "What can I do for you?"

She sighed. "I'm just looking for good booze and cheap company... Sorry, got that backwards."

"Well, I can only guarantee one of those things."

"It's a package deal, Cage. Either you provide both or I'm walking to O'Neal's for tonight."

"Fine. Pull up a seat." He motioned to the cushy chairs in front of his desk, and Jess didn't hesitate for a second pulling it out and plopping down.

Luke meanwhile, stood up and looked over the shelf of alcohol on the far wall. "What are you in the mood for? Champagne? Vodka?"

"Anything with a high percentage."

"You sick of bourbon yet?"

"Yes. Give me some."

Luke grabbed a bottle of George T. Stagg, might as well splurge a little so long as he was with friends, and a pair of whiskey glasses. A large ice cube in each. He filled Jessica's up a little higher than his own.

"You know," Jessica said. "I don't think I've ever asked. How the hell did you end up with this place? Weren't you living out of an apartment like last year?"

"It's uh..." Luke sat back down with drinks in hand. Slid Jessica's over to her. "It's complicated."

Jess started shooting her drink. "Well shit. I hate complicated stories."

"You remember Mariah Dillard?"

"Uhf... vaguely? Wasn't she... a district attorney or something?"

"She was on the city council."

"Yeah, I don't really follow politics."

"She tried to kill me."

"Oh. Well. Sorry and shit."

"It's fine," Luke gave a soft smile. "It didn't take."

"So, she tried to kill you. And then she gave you a fancy nightclub."

"That's the complicated part."

"What's complicated about it."

"I don't know why she did it."

"Ah." Jessica polished off her glass.

"Maybe she just accepted defeat. Or maybe it's all a trick. Or maybe – maybe she agrees with everyone else. That I've changed."

"Do you think that you've changed."

"...I don't know. Sometimes I think maybe I have. Sometimes I think maybe I'm second guessing myself."

"Yeah, hate that."

"Do you think I've changed?"

"Luke, I haven't talked to you since like the ninja thing. I don't know."

"Hmm..." Luke sipped at his own drink.

Jessica sighed and shifted in her seat. "I mean, okay. Why do you think that you've changed. Or, why do you think other people think that you've changed."

Luke, didn't need to think about that. He stopped as if he was about to think about it, but in truth he only wished it was complicated enough to warrant deep thought. Why had he changed? "I like the superhero thing. I really do. You'll never catch me admitting it outside of this room, and I hate the whole... culture that's around it now. But people started calling me that because I was a guy with powers who cared about his neighborhood and wanted to stand up to the people fucking it up. But, there's only so far that gets you. I can block a bullet, but what does that actually... mean? They can't shoot me, but they can arrest me, they can take away what I own, they can hurt the people I care about."

"You don't need to tell me that these fucking powers are overrated, I'm already on your side."

"The first time I actually tried to do something with my powers. To be someone. Can't believe it looking back on it now. But it just ended up being this – this pissing contest. I messed with him, he messed with me, people got hurt. People – well, it's embarrassing to think about now. To say the least. But I thought back then that these powers made me invincible, unstoppable, and that's just not the case."

"You can bench whatever you want and that doesn't have anything to do with – how society carries on from day to day. Like this shit's only good for fighting, and nobody wants to start a fight. Why would they."

"If I want to keep helping people, help people beyond just showing up to a shootout and taking up as much room as possible, I need to negotiate with the people who are ultimately behind it all. I need to be on their level to have any, actual leverage. To actually be able to do something about them. To get on their level, I need money, I need connections, I need the status. And those are things I can only get from a place like this."

"And you think that being on that level means you're just going to turn into one of them."

"...Kind of, yeah."

"I mean, I get it. Shit like that's why I said fuck it to this whole, damn thing."

Luke put his cheek on his fist. "I don't think I have it in me to say fuck it."

"Yeah, well, you're a good person," she muttered.

"Thanks." He gave a small smile. "You know, when I – when we got back. After the whole, you know."

"I know."

"When I heard that this place got snatched out right from under me, that panic hit me harder than learning that I'd been gone for five years. The thought of having to start over from square one, I didn't know if I could. Worst thing about it is, I think maybe I still have to anyways. I didn't have a say in any of this, and even when I've got it all, feels like I still somehow managed to lose all my respect, connections, and standing anyways."

Jessica's brow furrowed. She stared intently into her empty glass.

"Well," she eventually said with a shrug. "If you do end up turning into an asshole, I mean, I'm already used to it. Story of my fucking life, everyone around me just turning to dickbags."

"You know that's more sad than supportive."

"Yeah, I know. Hey you got any more of this stuff."

"Sure." Luke poured her another glass. "So... this Mysterio business is wrapped up and done with, yeah?"

"Really hoping so."

"What about Kara?"

"What about Kara."

"She up and vanished, didn't she? Everything's all squared away, except we don't know where she is or what she's doing."

Jessica sighed. "Look, I have my reasons for thinking that she's done with all this. But the real shit is, that I just don't want to deal with her. Or her dad. Or that whole, cursed fucking family ever again. I'm saying fuck it while I can."

"Alright."

"Alright." Jess started drinking.

"...But..."

"...But. Kara seemed really disappointed when I found the bombs in the basement. She said I wasn't supposed to. I think probably she wanted me dead then. I think the fact that I made it out means that whatever she had planned fell through and we're done here."

"You think or you hope?"

"Same difference."

"Well, Jessica Jones, in that case, cheers to a job well done."

He raised his glass. Jessica half-heartedly clinked it and drank more.

Only after the fact did she actually say "Cheers."

"So... other than that, how have things been?"

"Really."

"Genuine question."

"Your conversational skills are as smooth as ever."

"You saying getting the club hasn't helped me improve?"

"...It's been – ya know. The usual. Followed around some assholes all day, took pictures of them having sex, got paid and then yelled at."

"Quite the busy schedule you keep, Ms. Jones."

"Yeah, well, we can't all live up in your ivory club towers. Some of us still have to work for a living."

"Ouch." He gave a smile. "That hurts, Jess."

"Then I know I've still got my edge."

John woke, slowly, quietly. A step at a time. Sunlight filtered down through the leaves over his head, but, now that he was thinking about it, he didn't really have the instinct to "rise with the sun" anymore. After all, the human brain responds to light collected by the eyes, and though his brain and body may be human still, eyes were things that he no longer possessed, so any light he collected through his space would bypass the brain's check that would wake it.

Well, in either case, it was a regular schedule and the sounds of people moving about that woke him up. Not the light.

He sat up with a stretch, took a deep breath, and started looking over everything. Saw the morning shift guards taking over for the graveyard shift guards, some of the prisoners stirred awake bright and early, several more would stay asleep for a few more hours. The mail had come in, communications with the state of New York made up the bulk of it, but taking up more space were several prisoner packages including...

Oh, wow. Really? John had supposed he had been waiting for a while now, but he didn't quite expect it to be today. All of the sudden he wondered if he was prepared for this. If he should've done more to get ready, physically or mentally. He certainly hadn't been able to get as far into the prison as he would've liked, but things wouldn't exactly fall apart if he went now.

No, no his instructions were quite clear. Today was the day. It needed to be done now.

John stood and stretched. He had to be loose. He had to be ready. No room for error today. A few deep breaths to calm his nerves. Focus. Focus. Focus. Be in the moment. Be everywhere.

John drew a small circle in front of him, as small as he could make it.

Then he took hold of it.

It took some digging, he had to scrape and claw to get a finger in. And he tugged on the side to make it bigger. He managed to shove a finger from his other hand in. And he wrenched the circle apart.

And, as he was doing so, he was also reaching into his mind and connecting this hole to every hole he had created across the prison, in the past weeks' worth of work. The air was suddenly filled with blank space. John's blank space.

There was a moment of silence. Everyone looked up from whatever it was they were doing, looked to try and understand what the brain could only make out as movement and changing color in their vision, looked to attempt to comprehend the incomprehensible.

And then the alarms went off. John laughed to himself. It was the response he expected but it was still funny.

Well, he wasn't just out to cause a mass panic. Time to get to work.

John stepped through the hole in front of him and stepped out the hole in the mail room. Specifically the hole behind the guard that had sorting through mail at the time. John wondered if the man would've noticed him if it weren't for the blaring sirens and giant holes in space over his head. No, wait, he spun, John supposed he wanted to look at all of the holes, which was understandable, he supposed.

In either case, John was already in the process of tipping the nearest cabinet over onto his head, which if it didn't knock him out would certainly inconvenience him long enough for John to get what he needed and leave.

The cabinet hit the man and then the ground with a loud crash. And already he was struggling to get it off of him, so obviously it was the latter.

John walked over to the bench where sat a long box, over 3 feet, wrapped in UPS brown. He grabbed this box, tucked it under his arm, then left the room. And after he did, he made sure those holes would only point to themselves, for the fun of it. The guard would certainly try to chase when he finally freed himself, perhaps some Scooby Doo hijinks would lighten his mood.

John's next destination was the cell of one Carl Burbank. Shared by some brat named Ricky Calusky. John did not pay him more mind than needed. He stepped out of the hole, into the cell. Carl stepped off of his bunk and was immediately standing at attention. Ricky was just staring slack-jawed.

"Package for you," John said.

"Do you have the escape routes set?"

"I should, but we still need to collect the other one. And his gear."

"What about the safe room?"

There were 5 guards rushing in his direction, moments away from rounding the corner and being in eyeline. Guns were already being drawn. How'd they know where to- ah, yes, he could see himself on the security screens. These boys were coordinated.

"There is a better time and place to discuss this than here and now." He gestured to the hole behind him.

Carl grunted something akin to an agreement and brushed past and through. John gave a polite nod to Ricky and followed him. Just in time, the guards burst around the corner. Ricky scrambled to follow them, so John sent him off to the mess hall. In less than a second he was pinned to the ground by his neck.

John and Carl stepped out into the guards' changing room. John opened a locker and grabbed a baton that had been left behind when someone clocked out last night and he took that and jammed it into the door. Keep it from opening, for now at least.

Carl looked at him. Nudged the package with his foot.

John sighed. "Must I do everything around here?"

John of course already knew what was inside the package, and reasonably Carl should as well, or at least have a strong idea, he supposed he wouldn't have the means to know for certain but to know beyond a reasonable doubt- Well, John tore the package open anyways to confirm it. A long, plastic case. Opening it up revealed a set of flesh-colored prosthetic arms.

John grabbed one. The left one. "Is there some method to getting this on, or..."

"Just slot it over the stump here." He reached over and grabbed the tied off sleeve of his orange jumpsuit with his teeth and tore and a second later John could see the stump he referred to.

A sharp banging came from the door. These people certainly worked quickly. A new cavalcade of guards were attempting to bust the door down, without the proper tools no less. Simply ramming their shoulders into the thing.

John still wasn't sure he was doing this quite right, he had never been one for engineering. But, he put the cup of the arm over the stump, pressed it in, and the arm seemed content to do the rest. It clamped onto Carl's shoulder and then started to move. Carl lifted the hand, flexed the fingers, tested the joints. Things were going well.

"Go grab the dumbass," he said. "I can get the other one."

"Alright." John left him to it, but did still keep some of his eyes on him, saw him grab the other arm out of the case and slot it on. It wasn't that John wasn't trusting, but, ah, well, perhaps John just wasn't trusting. He poked his head through the hole and came out in the cell of Joss Shappe (shared with one Peter Petruski). And there he found Shappe lying on his bunk with a pillow over his face while Peter pressed his face into the bars to try and see what was happening.

"Shappe," John said. "Shappe, get up. It's time to go."

"Oof," Shappe groaned back. "Can we go tomorrow? I'm feeling really under it right now, sorry."

"My, you are useless." John stepped out and moved to haul Shappe if he had to.

Peter looked had to double take, looking back to see what Shappe was doing, looking back through the bars in case he missed something, looking back as he just now noticed the spotted man taking Shappe out of his bunk and over his shoulder.

"Ah, I am sorry Mr. Petruski," John said once he got Shappe into something approximating a standing position. "But I'm afraid you won't be coming with."

John, with Shappe over his shoulder moved to hobble back through his hole in the wall, but, uhm, something was wrong. It took him a moment, a tingling up the back of his spine sent him into a panic, he began to check everywhere he could think of, the guards station, the changing room Carl was hunkered down in, the bus depot, the confiscated items room. Each look wasn't much more of a glance, a fraction of a fraction of a second, definitely not enough time to actually absorb any information.

No, he wasn't quite sure what exactly was wrong, and each instance that passed only increased his panic moreso. He wasn't sure, that is, until, the piercing white hot pain in his arm.

The pain came first, the sound hit him second, it wasn't until he focused his attention and looked did he realize what was happening. That the guards had acted quicker than he expected them to, and were already rushing to his position.

No time to dally then. With his good arm, he shoved Shappe's limp body through the hole. A bullet pinged off the bars of the cell, another flew over his head. He jumped through after him.

Peter attempted to follow them, and John could not honestly blame him considering the circumstances, but he still couldn't have him following. So Peter, instead, found himself flopping onto Ricky's body in the mess hall and subdued just as quickly.

"You're injured," Carl said as he finished attaching his other arm.

"I'll live." John clutched at the bullet wound. Now that he wasn't panicking as much, it was really starting to hurt.

Shappe sat up, clutching his head. "What are we still doing here, I thought we were leaving."

Carl cuffed him over the back of the head, and he fell back down. "We still have to get your shit, idiot."

"Yes, about that," John started saying and then was interrupted by the sound of gunfire blasting through the locked door.

"Can it wait?"

"Perhaps." Not long, but, "through that one."

He pointed. Carl tossed Shappe over his shoulder and charged through, John thought about how he might like that baton before leaving, but was dissuaded from these thoughts by further gunfire tearing through the wooden door. He followed Carl instead. To a plain hallway on the west side of the prison, near the management offices.

"Where the hell are we?" Carl asked.

"I wasn't able to make it all the way to the confiscation room. This is as close as I made it before it was time to go."

"It's always something isn't it."

"I know where it should be. Probably." John rounded a corner and then promptly unrounded it as gunfire filled the air from the other end.

"Ah," he said. "It seems that they may have some idea what we're after."

Carl grumbled a few curses as he flipped his arm to draw his pistol. John looked towards the other end of the hall as precisely as he could. It was three hallways (that part he already knew) arranged in an H-shape. John and Carl and Shappe were in one prong of the H, the one filled with holes, five guards were hunkered down in the other prong, the one that wasn't full of holes but did contain their destination.

Well, progress had to be made somehow. Carl returned fire. John moved to help, he started to draw a circle, more holes in space were something he could always use.

Carl swat his hand out of the air with the butt of his pistol arm. "Don't block my shot," he said.

"Well," John said. "Lead the way then."

Carl ducked back. The hallway between them quickly filled back up with gunfire from the other side, though John supposed that gunfire could be few things other than quick. He spun his pistol back into a hand and then spun both hands at the same time so now both of his hands were guns.

"Give me some cover," he said.

John pulled the gun out of his waistband, entirely unsure of what exactly to do with it. There were a couple angles he could come at this, a couple ways to utilize holes in space. But Carl was glaring at him and waiting for him to make a move. So John just stuck his hand around the corner and started firing blindly.

That was enough apparently. The guards on the other end immediately ducked back. And once the incoming bullets stopped, Carl was free to step out from behind cover and start walking forward. His sub-machine gun arm was held out and left spraying without rhyme or reason, other than giving the opposite wall the texture of a golf ball. He was not moving fast, so John had time to haul Shappe's limp body over his shoulder and follow behind, and Carl was large enough that even now they did not risk peeking out from behind him so long as John kept his profile low and thin.

But the guards at the other end of the hall, like John, noticed a pattern in his shots, and the blind spots therein. One peeked from behind cover, coming at Carl from an angle that should have theoretically had a near zero chance of a bullet from the spray hitting them. And then, while spraying, Carl shifted his pistol hand to shoot them somewhere in the head. Possibly the chest, but not a whole lot of that had been sticking out unfortunately. Someone on the other side had the same idea, John was the one to shoot that one. Carl was busy.

Two of the guards, in what must have been a dreadful moment for them, gave up and ran. The third who decided to stay was met with a most unfortunate fate. He burst from behind cover and Carl immediately blew him away. Not with the pistol, with the sub-machine gun. John had to look away from the aftermath of that one, it was disgusting. Carl stopped to give the body a once over though, for what reason John wasn't sure, there wasn't really a chance that he made it looking like that.

Once he was done with that, Carl turned back to John. "Where to now?"

John pointed with his gun because it was the only free hand he had. "Down here."

He started down the hallway, but ah, a soreness in his shoulder stopped him.

"Can you carry the sack while I lead?"

"I need both my hands."

John sighed and shifted Shappe and took another scan of his surroundings. Those two other guards had ducked into the nearest side room. Not the one they were looking for, one of the regular filing offices, but a strong defensible position. The walls here were still made of brick. Door was locked, bullet proof glass. One of them peeked out at John through the glass, so John shot at their face. It didn't pierce the glass of course, but it did give them a good jump. That was funny.

As John led the way he drew a few small circles in the air around him, kind of pointing his gun in willy-nilly directions while doing so, out of necessity of course.

Four doors down and they arrived at the destination. Confiscated materials. The three of them ducked in. Fortunately the door was not locked. John pondered as to why that could be. Perhaps this room was considered low security enough that it didn't warrant proper security measures. Maybe they didn't want any prison staff getting locked in when the rest of the prison went on lockdown. It was possible that someone had just forgotten to lock it behind them when last they left.

It didn't really matter, but hypotheticals like these were entertaining to John.

Once safely within the room, John dumped Shappe onto the floor where he did little more than moan and groan. Carl gave him a kick. John moved to the door and, bending over and standing on his tiptoes to accomplish this, drew a wide circle around the doorway, flush against the wall. If anyone tried to barge or shoot or force their way in, they'd find themselves heading towards the westernmost tip of the surrounding treeline. Just a bit of extra security.

"Man would you get the fuck up?" Carl said.

Shappe responded with a moan that John didn't really have the motivation to attempt to translate into English. He was already scanning through the filing system. Sanders, Saul, Schaefer, Shannon, Shappe. There it was. Wasn't much in his shoebox of a basket, but it was hard to ignore the pair of metal boots sitting there.

"Here we are." John pulled them out and presented the shoes. Outside there was shouting, there were clomping footsteps. Seems the cavalry had arrived.

"Wait," Shappe's head popped up. "They got all my shit here?"

"Unfortunately my friend, illegal paraphernalia was confiscated by the police and sent to their stash at the precinct."

"Fuck!" Shappe let his head fall back down onto the stone floor.

"Get up!" Carl yelled. "Or we're leaving you to die here."

"Mr. Burbank, our orders were clearly to have all three of us there."

"And I'll tell him that our third was a piece of shit who can't carry his weight, he'll understand I'm sure."

"I'm not so sure myself."

"I can't man!" Shappe writhed on the ground. "I just can't, my head's freakin' exploding. There's needles in my brain. Everything's so heavy. I can't do it!"

John looked down at the tantrum. "Well I'm not carrying the shoes and him."

"Just get them on his feet," said Carl.

That was well enough, John supposed. The boots despite being so complex to look at, seemed pretty simple to operate. They opened up and clamped down on their own. Left boot on his limp, left foot, right boot on his right. At least John thought it was simple. When putting the boots onto Shappe, he somehow, John still wasn't sure how really, he somehow activated the thrusters and in the next second Shappe had flipped and tumbled and careened into the far wall.

"Is he dead?" John asked.

"God I hope so."

The question was rhetorical of course, John could see his still beating heart and still active brain. The first sign of movement was a twitch of the fingers, but after that Shappe extracted himself from the dent he had formed in the stone wall.

"Whoo!" He smacked his forehead with his palm a couple times. "Yeah! Alright! I'm feeling it now, let's do this shit."

"You're fucking with me," Carl said.

"I think the phrase is 'all's well that ends well'," said John.

"Let's just get this over with."

John shifted his attention back to the hallway and, oh my there was quite a crowd out there. A few people had been brave enough to dive through the hole blocking the entrance, and were confusedly sitting in a puddle 5 miles out. It would be a bit of a trek to get back, but they had the whole day ahead of them after all.

"If we're all set to go then," John drew a circle in the center of the room. The three of them stepped through. From the west side of the prison to the north. Under the shining sun. Amidst the beautiful breeze. Next to a set of garage doors. In the path of two sniper rifles. Perhaps that last point could be rectified. John shuffled over to the cover of a tall stone wall, just in time for a round to dig into the concrete where he had just been standing.

"Shappe, deal with them," he said, drawing a circle in front of him that would lead to the base of the nearest sniper tower.

"On it." And with a burst of air he was gone, though John heard something ping off of metal past the wall.

"Burbank, the door, if you would."

Carl grumbled and kneeled down next to the garage door. He took the metal padlock that kept the garage sealed tight in his hand and squeezed it until it more resembled a crushed soda can, then yanked it off and lifted the garage door open.

Inside was, and of course John already knew this, he could see into the garage the whole time, inside was a fleet of prison buses lined up and pointed towards the exit.

"Did you get the keys?" Carl asked.

"Ah, knew I forgot something." John slipped a hand under his shirt and stuck his hand through a hole in his chest. That hand came out in one of the administrative offices, abandoned now as the entire prison was in a state of emergency. Along the key rack his fingers danced until he found a set of car keys and snatched those off of the ring and pulled them back out into his hand. The tag on it read 1509.

1509, 1509. John could see the paint numbers on the sides of the bus, no matter which angle it was he looked from, so he found bus 1509 rather quickly. It was in the front line, which was perfect but also expected and planned for. A twist of the keys and bus 1509 opened up. And then he handed those keys off to Carl.

Carl took the keys without question and got behind the steering wheel. The engine roared to life, the headlights lit up. And with a foot on the accelerator the tires squealed and shot the two of them out of the garage and onto the main road. John looked up as they approached, saw Shappe jump from one of the guard towers and in a burst of air suddenly appear on the one across from it. Already in the process of clubbing the sniper with the other guy's rifle.

"Hold on to something," Carl said.

John didn't even get out a grunt of confusion when a sudden impact sent him sprawling to the ground. He realized, only at this moment, that the bus had rammed the front gates, which had still been locked. This was why Carl was the one driving, John was terrible at keeping his focus on the road.

With the nearest snipers taken care of, Shappe slid back down the ladder, going as fast as he could without – well, without getting too far into dangerous, injury-causing speeds. He hit the ground hard. John couldn't see from this distance how shaken his bones were, but at the same time, it was Shappe.

He opened the door and stepped out of the tower as John and Carl passed. Carl wasn't slowing down for him. But of all the people to be stuck trying to catch up to a moving bus... well, it was Shappe.

John watched him through the walls. He wasn't running so much as skating on the air that the boots shot out under him. He would shoot forward for an instant, skate alongside the bus, immediately fall behind because he was still going at bicycle speeds and not escaped prison bus speeds, and then after he went back a certain distance, he would shoot forward again.

"Hey!" he yelled between jumps. "Hey!" "Let!" "Me!" "In!"

"Can you open the door, Burbank?"

Carl shifted a lever by the steering wheel back and forth. "Nope. Doors won't open while we're moving."

"Alright," John said. "Alright."

As Shappe fell behind again, John pulled his gun, aimed at the glass, and fired three shots. Only one bullet came out though. The other two only gave him clicks. John looked down at the pistol. The clip was empty. This was frustrating.

The glass of the door was left with a small hole and a spider-web of cracks, but certainly nothing that any part of Shappe, or John for that matter, could fit through. Frustrating.

John had an idea, one that probably wouldn't work, but at least the risk was low. Low-ish. As he thought about it, he wondered if Shappe might get sliced in half. The situation was highly unorthodox. Well, he supposed, at worst, it would be an interesting learning experience.

What John did was pull his shirt off over his head and then wrap it around his fist. With his free hand (with more than a little pain from that bullet wound, but the adrenaline was helping out wonderfully with that) he drew a hole in the floor of the bus. He had to make sure the hole was on the bus and not on the air so that it stayed with him and didn't fly out the back. Then, John took his fist wrapped in shirt and he punched the glass of the door.

It certainly felt like that hurt him more than it hurt the door. The glass barely budged and his knuckles cried out in pain. But, he could see the cracks widening and lengthening. He was clearly doing something. He punched again. And again. The hole in the center got wider and sharper with every blow. And John punched until his entire fist burst through the window and out into the rushing air. Glass dug into his elbow, but he would be fine for now. It was only if he stopped to linger on it would that become something debilitating.

He shook the shirt off of his hand. And then when Shappe jumped forward again, he only stopped just before either breaking or snapping off John's entire forearm. Frustrating, this was all so frustrating.

Okay.

John held up three fingers, hoping that Shappe would get the idea. He just looked confused as he fell behind again. Then John went to two fingers. He seemed to get the idea then. Then one finger. Shappe tensed.

With what little leverage John had, he drew the largest circle he could. It still wasn't that large, only managing a little under 2 feet in diameter. As soon as the hole appeared it flew back, straight towards Shappe. Shappe shot forward with a burst of air that John could only see over the rushing wind, his hearing absolutely failed him. And John only barely managed to see Shappe himself jump and twist in the air and flatten out as he traveled through John's space.

But, he made it.

The next thing John knew there was a loud crash from inside the bus as Shappe slammed into the roof and left a sizable, Shappe-shaped dent, and then fell back to the ground. His legs slipped back through the hole on the floor, but he was safely inside, not really at risk of falling back out.

With the danger safely bypassed and the prison now miles behind them, John had the freedom to cautiously extricate his arm from the dangerous broken glass hole that it was currently lodged in without further injury. Which was fortunate. John was still very fond of his arms. It was, at this point in his progress escaping humanity, a bit surreal to look down at both hands and see crimson red blood coating both of them. The ichor of humanity staining the chalky white hands of something decidedly other.

Ah, well, he would have time to contemplate this later. For now, he pulled Shappe out of his hole in the bus's floor, and then focused on it. Fingers on both sides of the hole, he drew it in, and drew it closed. And with it, so too did shut every hole in space in and surrounding the prison. All instantly. All without a trace.

John would've loved to see the reactions to that little trick, it was one of the first things he had practiced back in Germany. Perhaps, he realized in hindsight, it would have been better to leave one, just to see someone gawk as so much chaos vanished quicker than the mind could process it. It would have been so entertaining. But, only the Avengers have ever been able to change the past. He wasn't quite on that level just yet.

"Whew," Shappe said, breathing heavily. "That went well I think."

"Couldn't agree more," John said. "Now comes the hard part."