Penance was working. Or, at least, she should have been, but instead she just stared vacantly down at today's prototype, mind wandering. Her eyes went with it, dancing absently across the surface before her, following strands of dizzying energy.

To the casual observer, she was working—but Amalia knew the look of a Penance with something on her mind: a pensive Penance, if you will. And Mrs. True knew what it was, too, that distracted her so. So she tapped her friend quite softly on the shoulder.

"Are you alright?"

Penance stiffened, face hard, like any expression would have her bursting into uncontrolled tears.

"It's alright if you're not."

Penance still didn't answer, unsure what to say, knowing that whatever she tried to would be caught in her throat and replaced with a sob.

"No one… should have to see that," Amalia continued, treading lightly in her empty comforts.

"I'd…" Penance finally croaked, eyes still cast down at the electricity dancing between her fingers, "I'd seen death before. But it was different. It was before my Turn."

Amalia opened her mouth to recite some hollow sympathy, but then closed it, the words snuffed by her curiosity.

"It was the last to go," Penance muttered.

"What was?"

Finally, Penance looked up at Amalia, horror in her superpowered eyes, "The energy. Even after she was surely dead, I could see it, the electricity in her head, under her skin… I could see this… hope, even once everyone had lost it. And then it went away."

"Penance…"

"She was covered in bullet holes, and energy… exploded in her brain. And it was like… like her soul was trapped for a moment. And then it just… she was gone."

An odd sound escaped Amalia's throat, the woman at a rare loss for words.

"I don't want to see death like that, True."

There was a long silence, as Amalia wracked her brain for some way that she could relate to Penance's terror through her decades of experience.

"Energy… cannot be created or destroyed," Amalia finally recited, "only converted. That's what the books used to say, anyway. But you knew that, didn't you?"

"It's the Law of Conservation of Energy. I do read, you know."

"You know because you see it. I didn't think you had to read."

"What's your point?"

Amalia made her discomfort known with a stutter, "That energy. Mary's. It's still out there, I guess."

"That doesn't make me feel better," said Penance, "I watched a soul leave a person, and God didn't come to take it and it didn't fly up to heaven. It died, like a battery. I watched the life leave her. Even you don't know what that's like, True."

"I guess not. Not in the way that you can see it," said Amalia, "I didn't know you could see the electricity in our bodies. You never told me."

"Honestly?" said Penance, "It seems wrong. I don't like to think about it. Machines are easy, but I could never wrap my head around the human mind. Or maybe I could—I don't like to think that all of who we are can be manipulated with some copper wire."

"It doesn't work like that," said Amalia, "At least, I don't think."

"I can see currents running through you every time you twitch a finger, open your mouth. It looks just like everything else I build."

Amalia had never been so frightened by Penance as in that moment, an inventor fresh out of hope and more powerful than anyone of this era could possibly understand. And something in Penance's observation seemed dangerous, threatening, to Mrs. True.

"And I was the one…" Penance looked back down, exhaustion saturating her demeanor, "I had this plan, out of my brain on opium. 'Take all the Touched to the park! Have a fuckin' picnic surrounded by those who want them dead!'"

"It's not your fault," said Amalia.

"I lured them right to her, with my damned Brightener. We should have left it all alone, hid her away somewhere no one could get to her again."

"She wanted to sing."

"She wanted to sing because we wanted her to."

"Penance…" Amalia was dry of conversation, so she moved to caress Penance's face instead.

But Penance flinched away, "This plan of ours, whatever it is. It isn't worth one single life, Amalia."

"I know."

Penance looked into her eyes. Stared, dazed.

"What?"

"Until now… Until...— I didn't realize how beautiful it is."

"What?"

"Life. The energy in your eyes."

"Oh, are my neurons looking very fine today?"

"When the shooting started, the first thing you did was throw me to the ground."

"I wanted to keep you safe."

"If I had to see that happen to you… If I had to watch the life melt from you… Amalia, I couldn't go on."

"You don't have to worry about that."

"How could you know? Always running into danger, shooting yourself to protect me."

"I see the future."

"Not all of it."

"If I die, I'll make sure to do it in a Faraday Cage so you can't see it."

"Haha. That's not how that works."

There was another silence, their banter running out like a battery—like a life.

Amalia took Penance's shoulders, looked into her eyes so hard that she thought she could see the electricity sparking behind them herself, "Do not fall into the guilt. Keep your head above the water."

"Because who else will keep you from drowning?"

"I happen to have kept myself from my own watery grave yesterday, thank you very much," said Amalia.

"Barely, I'm sure."

"Mary Brighton knew the dangers more than anyone. She chose to sing, she chose to make this her cause, like you and I. Dozens of Touched came to us. Let us take that energy and make it into something new, something great."

"Hm," huffed Penance, comforted slightly but spirits still dampened.

"I'm so sorry you had to see her death like that. But Penance, don't you see? It's not death that's in your eyes. You can see Life. The absence of it, too, but Life all the same. I can't think of a greater gift."

Penance shut her eyes, then, and leaned into Amalia's shoulder. She could feel it, almost: the energy under her skin, the electric signals that allowed Amalia to take slow steady breaths; to lift her hand and pet Penance's hair.

And Penance couldn't force Mary from her mind, but her resolve was this: she would convert that energy, Mary's, preserve it, by going on and finishing this fight. No one could harness energy like Penance Adair, and Mary's would not go to waste. Whatever it was, this battle, this war: Until her last breath—until that last burst of energy fired off in her brain, Penance would fight. With Amalia True by her side.