Rest

You're doing too much.
If you make yourself sick,
You'll fail anyway.
Put away your books,
And take a walk with me.
We'll eat dinner with family,
And then you can continue.

As soon as Agent 4 is gone for the day, Marie sags against the cabin and lets out a sigh of relief. She rubs her face with both hands and goes inside. She brought all her recording equipment here, and she spent the entire time 4 was fighting that ridiculous toaster signing autographs to hand out at her next talk show appearance—which is tomorrow, she shouldn't have agreed—but she needs to record something for the radio if she wants to keep her job there. And 4 already asked for tomorrow off, she has to visit family outside of the city, and—

Marie's phone rings. She glares down at the caller ID and answers it. "I should never have un-quit."

"Yes you should," says Drown. "You love working at the radio, and you need something to do besides obsess. How many times did you call the police about leads today?"

"None," Marie says, and hesitates. "Well, once. But, uh, I didn't put up a fuss when he said he was looking and to get out of his claws so he could work." Marie has work to do, too.

But there's no sign of Callie.

Not that Marie expects a sign of Callie yet. Octavio took her. He must have.

"That's better. Have you eaten?"

Marie makes a face. "I had a sandwich for lunch." Which is true. She gave Agent 4 a sandwich and had one herself, though it didn't taste like much.

"And breakfast?"

Marie rolls her eyes. "No. Again."

"Okay. Sandwich is better than nothing. Meet me at Crusty Sean's at 6, you need to get out and it's splatfest, I'll treat you to anything on the menu. I've got plenty of tickets."

It's splatfest.

Which means Callie's been missing over a month, and it hits Marie all at once and she sits down hard on the bench, which wobbles like it might not support her after all. "What if she doesn't come back?"

"She will," Drown says. "She's Callie. She's fine. If she were dead, we'd know it; whatever happened, she's alive."

Marie clings to that. Drown thinks like most of the world: either Callie had a freak-out breakdown and ran away (Callie would never cut her off like that, not so completely, even if she had a mental break, but Marie saw the photos as well as anyone and knows Callie was stressed and exhausted and needed a break even more than Marie did) or she got kidnapped by some crazed fan-person and is being held hostage somewhere (which is closer to the truth, except Octavio is anything but a fan.) Marie knows better.

But everything points to one truth: if Octavio was going to kill her, he'd've killed her and been done with it. They'd have her body. Granted, it would've been her own personal nightmare for Callie to be dead here, and Marie couldn't bring the authorities to—Marie takes a deep breath. "It'll be okay," she says out loud, for Drown's benefit. "But if I don't record another episode, then I'll be in trouble soon enough."

"All right. Love you. Sync says hi."

"Tell her 'hi' right back," Marie says. "I'll see you for supper."

They hang up, and Marie puts her head between her knees and breathes.

It took weeks to get a proper Agent 4, for her to find someone who wouldn't give away the NSS and could be discrete, who had any sort of fighting skills, but she has someone now. Granted, someone who's never used any weapons but shooters before, but she and Sheldon can fix that. And she's hardworking and sweet and, somehow, only 14.

Marie can never again give Gramps shell for recruiting Agent 3 at age 14.

There's work to do. She needs to record her next radio show. She needs to...

Marie gets to her feet and walks into the canyon. She superjumps to the area 4 just unlocked, and looks around: rocks moving in midair, destroyed buildings.

Somewhere in here are kettles. And Marie is going to find and enter each one.

She can't go far. Not without back-up. Not with only her charger, strapped to the handle of her umbrella.

But she can find them, and see inside, so in a few days she can make sure Agent 4 is prepared.