A Waken 16.6

"You're getting it," Lafter insisted.

"It is too expensive," Veda replied.

Lafter pointed at the mirror. "Oh no, it's not."

It was good. The plunging neckline was not my style at all but it worked on her. The dress bunched a bit at her hips, filling them out… It might look good on me. Maybe. That plunging neckline still wasn't my style.

"Some things are worth every penny," Tattletale added. She lounged on a cushioned bench across from me, having long since 'shopped' herself out.

Mostly, we'd just tried various things. The actual pile of 'to buy' items was very small. A few tops and some sandals I'd agreed to buy solely to get—Fine. Fuck it. I liked the sandals. Sue me. I caved and I was going to get the sandals in the middle of winter because they were comfy and hid my bony ankles.

The rest of the clothes were indulgences and nearly all for Veda. Though it wasn't lost on me—or her—that we had similar builds. Clothes that fit one of us would mostly fit the other. Some of the items Veda picked out she hadn't even tried on. They were things Lafter and Tattletale made clear I 'had' to buy.

She was being nice in acquiring them for herself, knowing we'd probably be able to share them.

"I think we've shopped enough for one day," Veda protested.

"Please," Akihiro pleaded. "We've been here for hours."

Tattletale chuckled. "You've been here for hours watching cute girls try on clothes and you're complaining?"

"Yes," he answered bluntly.

Tattletale shrugged and waved toward Lafter. "At least he's honest."

"It's the best policy," Lafter replied defensively.

"In a robot maybe." Tattletale glanced at Veda. "No offense."

"I am not a robot," Veda noted.

"What's wrong with robots?" Lafter asked.

"Nothing." Tattletale shrugged. "They do what you say."

"Well, maybe some robots have standards."

"Ah yes. Standards."

Fortunately, I don't think Akihiro realized he was the robot in that metaphor.

Probably for the best. "I think I'm the only one here with any worthwhile opinions on robots."

"Veda says she's not a robot," Tattletale pointed out.

"I am not," Veda confirmed. Green jumped up from the floor behind her and waved. "The Haros are."

"And the Haros can kick your ass when it suits them," I reminded her.

"Debatable," Tattletale said through a slight paling of her face. She leaned her head back and Green leaned forward to look at her face. "Last I checked," she mumbled, "We're at a draw."

"Says you, says you."

"I'm uncertain that being in a draw with robots is that much better than losing," Veda quipped.

Lafter gawked. "We should have gotten ointment earlier."

Veda perked her head up. "Is someone burned?"

She knew exactly what she just did. Damn. Who knew Veda had learned to trash talk?

"It probably is time to go," Orga said. He looked over his shoulder to the front of the store. "It'll be dark soon."

"Afraid of assassins in the night?" Tattletale asked, breaking her staring contest with Green in the same moment.

"Bedtime," Akihiro grumbled. "The kids get anxious if they don't see Orga."

And hello excuses. "I'm pretty shopped out anyway. We should get home and make sure Aisha wasn't doing homework to distract us."

"I could—" A quick warning look stopped Veda mid-sentence. "Yes." She shifted uncertainly. "We should do that."

Good girl.

I rose from my seat and stretched my arms over my head. I'd been sitting on and off but it only made me feel stiffer. Shopping can be a workout and unlike jogging, the aches didn't feel rewarding. It might not be so bad after all, but it wasn't something I wanted to do too frequently.

I'm just not a shopper.

"We could try getting some food on the way back," Lafter suggested. She leaned over and peeked across my back toward Akihiro. "There's gotta be some nice places around here."

She wasn't wrong. The college lay across the street. Mom's favorite Italian restaurant lay on the corner. I wouldn't mind going there again. We—Dad and me—had avoided it ever since.

Glancing toward Tattletale though, it might need to wait.

We need to figure out why she's really here.

It was nice of her to put off whatever it was so I could just be for a bit, but I'd had enough and whatever it was was important enough to just drop in about.

Green continued putting things back which left us free to gather up purchases, which cost more money than I'd ever paid for anything short of land and left. Lafter shuffled all the bags to Akihiro and again posited going out for food as we left.

"How about burgers?"

"Diet," Tattletale answered.

"I need to check on the kids," Orga warned.

"I have tinkering to do," I agreed.

Veda tilted her head. "I have never had a burger. Is it good?"

Lafter turned and started to answer. I leaned around from behind her and shook my head. Veda blinked, uncertain.

"Perhaps it can wait," she adjusted quickly. I nodded. "Yes. It can wait."

Lafter got a confused look at first. Then she straightened up, eyed Akihiro, and turned away to hide the red on her face. "Well, I guess that just leaves Muscles and me."

Akihiro grimaced, bags hanging from his arms. "Actually—"

Suddenly, Orga put an arm around Akihiro's broad shoulders. "One moment."

"Wait, wha—" Lafter started to follow as Orga pulled Akihiro away and I quickly grabbed Lafter because I didn't need to be smart to guess what was about to happen.

I gave Orga a questioning look but he just turned Akihiro around a few feet away and started whispering. At some point, Akihiro started to turn. Orga stopped him and whispered more harshly.

"What do you think they're talking about?" Lafter asked grimly.

I considered sparing her but… Lafter deserved better. "If I had to guess, he's telling Akihiro you're trying to be alone with him."

Lafter stiffened up slightly. "Well, why would I—"

"Really?" Tattletale asked. "As a thinker, believe me when I say literally everyone else has noticed."

Lafter's face sunk. "Oh."

I patted her shoulder. I couldn't really think of anything better to say, so, "You'll do fine."

"Be brave," Tattletale concurred. "Or just go asexual. It's worked wonders for me."

"I am confused," Veda interjected.

"It's complicated," I told her.

"Is it not better to be honest?"

"It's complicated," Tattletale repeated.

"I see."

"What do I…" Lafter stopped as Orga took all the bags from Akihiro and turned around.

He approached us, saying, "We should get back before it's too late."

He walked past me, shifting bags around awkwardly.

Hesitantly, I gave Lafter a reassuring look and turned to help him. "Hold on. The whole making boys carry things is crap anyway."

"Suit yourself," Tattletale mumbled as she and Veda followed behind me. I took some of the bags from Orga and handed them right to her. "You're missing the point of boys."

"I'm a second-wave feminist," I jested.

She gave me an unamused frown, but I thought it was clever.

Veda took a few more of the bags. Orga and I split the rest. We could drop everything at my house and sort it later. Most of it was for Veda and me anyway. I'd hold on to Lafter's package for her. She wasn't so impulsive she'd need them tonight… Yeah. Lafter wasn't that impulsive.

We went down the street toward the bus stop. I waited for the crowds to thin a bit. It was getting late. Prime shopping hours were passing.

"You can say why you're really here now," I told Tattletale. "You've been patient enough."

"It can wait," she restated calmly. "I'll head back to Sanc and let you have the rest of your night."

"It's fine," I insisted. "It was nice to do something with"—I almost hesitated—"friends."

"We are not friends."

"Can't have a frienemy without a friend," I grumbled. "Get it out. It's fine."

"You do seem more relaxed," Veda commented.

I felt more relaxed. Even with the effort put into not working, I guessed my mind was always fretting. Always thinking. I stopped working but I never let myself just relax. Never let myself feel at ease.

I didn't want to be vulnerable again. "I feel relaxed. It's nice. But whatever you came here for"—I pointed my hand at Tattletale—"it's important." Tattletale sighed. She nodded her head toward Orga, subtly. "He knows as much as anyone about what's going on."

"Unfortunately," he noted.

Tattletale shrugged. "I think it's time we had the talk with Stella."

My brow rose. "Stella?"

"She's more or less the leader of Cranial's kids," Tattletale explained. "And I think it's time we had a very uncomfortable conversation about what Cranial thought she was doing."

Oh. "And what they've been doing since we left them behind with Lalah Sune," I realized. "She invited them to stay with her because they could hear them."

"Them?" Tattletale asked.

"The powers," I clarified.

"Ah. Right. Them… They might know something we need to know."

"They might have talked to Administrator," I mumbled. My power.

"They've mentioned talking to mine." Tattletale rolled her eyes. "Trying to. Apparently, my power is a bitch."

I grinned. "Fits, doesn't it?"

She pointed her finger. "I'm letting you have that one."

"Sure you are."

"Sounds like something that doesn't need me," Orga muttered. "So unless you need me for anything, I'll head back."

I peered over my shoulder. "You don't think I need protection?"

"I think I've already said that it's idiots who need protection from you."

"And yet you follow her around," Tattletale mused. "Wonder why."

"To discourage the idiots," Orga replied. He shifted his packages to one arm and held out the other. "I'll take them. I figure your robots can collect them when I get home. You'll find everything in the workshop."

Very aware of the package of condoms and assuming this was how embarrassing misunderstandings happened, I respectfully declined. "I can just door home first and drop them off. Thanks for offering."

Orga shook his head and shrugged. "Chivalry undone by superpowers."

"Thank you for your patience," I offered. "I know you only stuck around so Akihiro wouldn't be alone with us."

He grinned wryly. "Did I?"

"Yeah," I affirmed. "Good try though."

Veda took his packages. We parted at an alleyway. He doored to Tekkadan's building. Tattletale, Veda, and I doored to my house. We dropped the bags off, I checked on Aisha—still doing homework what the fuck—and then we went to Sanc. I had a feeling we'd be doing a lot of that from now on. I'd have to get used to moving to the other side of the world in two footsteps.

"I asked Claire earlier to drop us off close to wherever Stella was," Tattletale explained. "Guess she's visiting the beach."

Raising my head, I asked, "In the middle of the night?" The sun had set in Brockton Bay, but there was still light spilling over the horizon. Here it was pitch black.

You could see the stars so clearly.

"Guess so." Tattletale shrugged. "No one much uses the beach even during the day though. They all know there are cities and houses out there in the water. No one feels like swimming here."
No one swam much in Brockton Bay either. Not with the Boat Graveyard in sight. "Do they come here often?"

Tattletale started down the beach ahead of me. "The kids?"

"Yeah." Veda and I stopped just beyond the water's edge as the waves rolled in. They weren't very impressive. Honestly, the water beyond the shore seemed very calm. "I know they've been cleaning out some of the assholes beyond the city."

"Yup," Tattletale chirped. "They've been cleaning those assholes out bit-by-bit. But nah. Stella is the only one who comes here. The others do their own things when they're not together."

I started after Tattletale. Veda couldn't get lost and she'd catch up after she'd experienced her first taste of a beach.

"And how have they been? I asked. "They were just watching TV the other day."

"Yeah." Tattletale rolled her eyes and waved at the air. "If I didn't know better, I'd think they were just normal kids half the time. They watch Saturday morning cartoons, read comics, are always arguing against bedtime, and have way too much energy."

"And the other half?"

"The other half they're raiding Heero's gun stash, beating assholes bloody, and threatening them with worse if they don't clear out from anywhere near the city. I'm okay with that part."

"Sounds like they still have… Whatever Cranial did to them."

"Yeah, but without the weird robot kid bits. They seem… Well, they seem like normal capes if you ask me. Not that they have powers like us I mean."

Right.

Cranial did do something. The one time I'd faced the kids outside a suit, they kicked my ass. And the ones who did it were younger than me. They moved fast, didn't seem to feel pain, and acted fanatically loyal to Cranial, even to the point of putting guns to their heads.

The Protectorate didn't have a clear idea of what Cranial did to them.

They only knew that she experimented on kids and turned them into commandos.

Commandos who did spin kicks.

Shit, I forgot about the spin kick.

"So it's okay?" I asked. "No big problems?"

"Other than Relena deciding to tell the council the truth and the whole lot of them having a fit over a bunch of tinker-enhanced super kids cleaning house?"

I stopped and stared.

"So yeah," Tattletale continued. "It's all pretty normal. Relatively speaking."

To my left, the city spread out into the hills. It all looked fairly normal, like it had every other time I'd seen it. Lively even, despite the late hour. In many ways, it seemed too nice to be a post-apocalyptic place. While the beach was fairly deserted, people were walking the street just a few feet away.

Veda caught up to us and fell into place to my left.

"I am surprised this city is as well put together as it seems," she said. "In many ways, it is in better shape than Brockton Bay."

"It helps that they get a fair bit of foreign aid," Tattletale explained. "And the varied assholes of the world seem to like leaving them alone because there's nothing here for them to exploit. Other than the mercenaries."

"Sanc has faster internet than we do," Veda pointed out. "Significantly faster."

I turned my head toward the water as we went.

Stella turned hers to meet me.

She stood in the water, ankle-deep. Whereas I'd previously seen her wearing a suit, now she wore a blue dress that hung from her shoulders by two thin straps. Tattletale tried a similar dress earlier. Wonder if there's a connection.

"Hello Sarah," she greeted.

"Stop calling me that," Tattletale replied. "My name is Lisa."

"Not according to your birth certificate," Veda quipped.

"Taylor," Stella went on. "Veda."

"Hello Stella," Veda replied.

I met her face uncertainly.

I'd made a lot of weird friends. Happy-go-lucky Germans. Future-seeing adolescents. Insane bomb tinkers. A punch of kids with guns and scary amounts of determination. A crotchety guy with a beard. Five old dudes.

I'd never actually seen any of them put a gun to their heads like they were ready and willing to kill themselves at the snap of a finger.

So, this was a bit awkward.

"You don't look surprised," I observed.

Stella smiled. "I've been waiting. It's time to talk, isn't it?"

More awkward? Sure. Why not? "Yeah. It's time to talk."

Stella stepped out of the water barefoot and joined us. We started to follow her down the beach. Weird night for a moonlit walk but whatever. It would work.

"Ask away," she said.

"And you're just going to answer?" I asked.

"Why wouldn't I?" She smiled solemnly. "We tried to do it ourselves before. Didn't work out."

"Yeah, kidnapping spree isn't a great resume item." Tattletale patted Stella on the shoulder. "Never is. Trust me. I know an asshole who did nothing but dream of ways to get away with it."

"Not our best moment," Stella agreed.

"Experience is the best teacher," Veda allowed.

"It is. So ask away. I'll say as much as I know."

Tattletale and I shared an uncertain look.

Kind of hard to know where to start when you have so much you could ask.

For me at least.

Veda went right in.

"Did Lalah Sune do something to you?" she asked. "You are different than you were before. I've been curious."

Stella shook her head no. "I don't think so. Grace gave us drugs. We kept using them after she died but once we were in the Firmament, we didn't have them anymore."

Drugs did that? What kind of drugs? Priorities. "Firmament?"

"The realm where they take physical form," Stella explained. "You've seen it."

"I haven't," Tattletale mumbled.

"Taylor has."

I had. "They looked like Endbringers."

"They're not," Stella assured me. "Exactly. The Endbringers aren't Shards. They're simpler. That's what Armamentarium said."

Right. That.

I narrowed my gaze. "Lalah Sune said you could understand them."

"Yes." Stella glanced over her shoulder at me. "We could."

I'd forgotten about that until they came back. At the time, it wasn't exactly the most important detail, what with the alien parasite superpowers. Priorities. Details fall by the wayside sometimes. They don't seem important until later.

Of course, I also hadn't realized at the time what Administrator was trying to do.

The GN Drive isn't meant to be a weapon.

It could be used as one sure. But that wasn't its true purpose. I'd reviewed the data from the briefcase, the notes. Veda was right. The patterns that Cauldron identified in Parahuman brains were very close to those generated by GN Particles. Almost identical. The differences were so slight, I couldn't even tell if they mattered.

It's for communication.

Administrator wanted to talk to me. There was a way for us to talk to one another. "How?" Tattletale leaned back and gave me a raised brow. I ignored her and watched Stella. "Have you talked to Administrator?"

Tattletale's brow rose higher. "Wait. What?"

I'd explain that question later. "Have you talked to her?"

Stella stopped and turned to face me.

She shook her head no again.

I blinked. "But—"

"Administrator never talked to us, even when we tried." Folding her hands behind her back, Stella looked out over the water. "There's something different about her. She had her attention somewhere else. Spent most of her time not paying attention to anything happening in the Firmament."

Watching me?

Tattletale frowned but shifted her attention away from me. "You've mentioned others. Warp. Devastator. Negotiator?"

"Negotiator is your Shard," Stella explained. "She's… She's kind of a bitch."

Tattletale scoffed. "That figures."

Wait, "What about Conclave? Stillness?"

Administrator called herself a cluster. She was multiple shards. Those were the two names I'd 'felt' when I pulled Stella and the kids back to Earth. Conclave and Stillness. They were part of my power.

"Sorry," Stella offered. "I don't know those two. There's too many for us to have known all of them. Mostly we stuck around those who were friendlier or connected to capes we knew."

That many? I'd never considered how many there were. Thousands? Tens of thousands? Billions. The entities could be massive. There were billions of humans on a single Earth, and we knew there were multiples.

"Can you describe their goals?" Veda inquired. "What are their intentions?"

Stella lifted her head and mumbled, "Most of them just want to get better at what they do. Warp warps. Negotiator negotiates. Devastator… Well, I guess the names we got were kind of self-explanatory."

Apparently.

But she hadn't talked to Administrator. I tried not to let my disappointment get to me.

"That's the point of all of it," Stella continued. "To collect data. To get better at what they do. Or, it was at least. Some of them have other ideas now."

"We kind of already knew that," Tattletale pointed out.

She did. Me on the other hand... "Is there nothing else? What about the war?"

Stella hummed. "I don't know that it can be called a war."

My brow went up. "Lalah Sune called it a war."

"I know." Stella turned and started along the beach again. She hummed to herself under her breath, and whispered, "More like that disease. The one where the body attacks itself."

"Auto-immune disease," Veda clarified.

"Yeah. They're many, but they're one too. They're fighting themselves as much as each other."

"How?" I asked.

"It's hard to describe. They argue and they refuse to share data. That's why they break sometimes. They can't configure themselves alone, and if others don't help they just stop working. They don't know what to do."

The Case-66s. Broken triggers. I'd guessed it was something like that. The war was damaging the network and spilling over. Configuration, she said. Curious choice of words. Made sense though.

Presumably, the shards weren't about super insight or building toys. They did that to get data, become better at their primary purpose. Giving us our powers…

They had to set themselves up to do it. Configure. Connect. Agree.

That's why some triggers broke.

They needed information to do all that work and if the other Shards refused to help then they were like a program that couldn't end. I was right. When Count and Teacher went there and said whatever they said, they introduced an argument into the network. The rest of Scion's body no longer agreed on the way forward. They didn't know what to do.

Stella had a point.

In one way, there was a war going on. The side that wanted to do things one way had to know that refusing to help others was causing damage. They were choosing by holding back necessary aid. That was their weapon. Data. The connections from one Shard to another.

In another way, it couldn't even be called a war.

It was more like an out-of-control argument.

"And that's all there is?" I asked. "Those who wanted to get better and those that want what?"

"There's a lot they have to say," Stella answered. "Some are more talkative than others."

"And what do they talk about?" Veda inquired.

Tattletale shifted her gaze to me, eyes narrowed. I ignored her look.

"Lots of stuff," Stella explained. "Warp likes Vista, thinks of her as his best friend. He admires her, her drive. I think he relates to her like that. He wants to be a better warper, and Vista wants to be a better hero."

"That makes sense," Veda mused. "Have you talked to the Shards of other parahumans we know?"

Stella nodded. "Navigator, Lafter's shard. It's very playful. It feels sorry for her. Wants to protect her. Woven Stranger too, Parian's shard. It's fascinated by her art. I think that's why she's less violent than other capes."

"The conflict drive," Tattletale stated.

"Something like that. Parian doesn't have much of one. Her Shard has other outlets."

"Well, how about that?" Tattletale laughed. "We'll just find every cape in the world a non-violent hobby!"

"It sounds like Shards develop attachments to their hosts," I surmised, ignoring Tattletale's attempt at humor.

"Some of them." Stella tilted her head. "Sting is very direct. I don't think it likes or dislikes Flechette. Chariot's shard is like energy. It always wants to move, but it gets frustrated with him a lot."

"Because Trevor can be indecisive?" I asked. Again Stella nodded. "I already suspected they had personalities. Do you know what side some of them are on?"

That time Stella shook her head no. "I don't think they recognize sides. They don't know what it is to fight among themselves."

Well, that didn't make much sense. They were fighting or arguing without realizing they were doing it? How was not helping other Shards configure themselves not a conscious choice?

"I think a lot of them are waiting," Stella hypothesized. "They're used to being told what to do and there's no one telling them anymore. So they wait."

I glanced to the side, pondering that.

I'd kind of hoped she might try to get me a message through the kids. Why wouldn't she? It was so simple and direct. A perfect way around her restrictions. Half our problem seemed to be doing something we were never intended to do. Although thinking about it, maybe it never occurred to Administrator to do things that way.

Scion probably didn't want his pieces conspiring with their hosts. They clearly all had their own minds. Just following the evil overlord handbook on that one.

It made sense… It made me wonder exactly what Administrator was planning to do and she needed my help to do it? Or maybe she didn't know what to do. She had a goal, but no plan for how to achieve it. She was the administrator, not the planner.

Break her restrictions. Take over the network. Become the core.

In that context, doing anything at all might be huge for Administrator.

"Penny for your thoughts," Tattletale said chidingly.

"Later." Turning my attention back to Stella, I asked, "It sounds like talking to them didn't actually reveal a whole lot."

"It's not really talking," she explained. "It's more like an exchange. They think. We think. There's a lot of guessing involved."

That might explain the unclear ambiguities. It's not that the Shards were bundled contradictions, but that even the kids couldn't understand them exactly. They were trying to interpret as if speaking different languages and only catching every other word.

That sounded a lot like my problem with Administrator actually. We wanted to talk but couldn't. There were obstacles in our way and she gave me the GN Drive to work at getting through them.

But that begged a question. "How do you do it? Understand them."

Stella met my eyes. "Grace called them quantum brainwaves."

Well, that was pleasantly direct. "Is that something Count told her about? We know she figured something out after the Gold War. Something Count said or did."

Stella shook her head. "I don't know exactly what it was. And I was the first."

"Her first victim?"

Stella started to protest. She stopped herself before getting the first word out, looked down, and closed her mouth. "Yes. I was the first she took. Grace had already started to lose it by then, though. It was too much for her. She broke trying to understand the problem and solve it."

"And Teacher started using her," Veda surmised. "A thinker most likely. Someone in the Protectorate under his influence. He became aware of what Cranial was trying to do and made use of her."

I nodded in agreement. It made sense. "Count must have said something. With her injuries, she must have been desperate. Or maybe the portal she used to escape the core sent Cranial searching and she started figuring things out."

"Her Shard didn't help," Stella added. "We tried talking to it." It occurred to me that Cranial would be in her Shard somehow, just like Mom was in Administrator. "It's one of the quiet ones. One of the ones that lost hope."

I paused. "Lost hope?"

Stella's expression shifted. It was firm and serious, worried. "Lalah did tell us one thing before she left."

I glanced towards Veda.

Technically, one thing the kids and I knew for certain Lalah was gone. She'd left before our eyes, rejoining the other two she'd come with and gone…wherever they were going. I wasn't really clear on that one.

She'd said she wanted to avoid picking a winner. Deciding our fate for us. I'd gotten the sense she had a preference though.

"What?"

Stella bowed her head. "Lalah said to be careful of anyone who loses hope." She was gone and still, she tormented me with cryptic bullshit. "Those with nothing to lose."

Oh. Oh shit. People with nothing to lose. People willing to burn it all down on the way out. If it could happen to humans, could it happen to Shards?

The very idea sent something twisting up inside me. Something visceral and panicked.

That could be a complication.

They didn't understand the kids and the kids didn't understand them. Not fully. Administrator and I were no different. I knew she was trying to understand me which inherently meant she didn't. Naturally, I had to do the same right back or it would never work. But that was just between Administrator and me. What about the rest of the network?

Bridging the gap between us might just be the beginning.

"Quantum brainwaves, you called them?"

Stella nodded.

"Tell me everything you can about them, and why Cranial wanted them."

Stella agreed. "We might want to sit down."

We found a cafe along the beachfront. It only occurred to me as we entered that Sanv was a lot like Brockton Bay. A ruined city left to rot by the world beyond it. Damaged people. Nice shoreline mired but ruins in the water.

Life can be weird sometimes.

So late at night, the cafe was sparse, but the people in Sanc were different than in Brockton Bay. They didn't know my face nearly as well. We were greeted and waited on without any of the lingering curiosity or interest my presence often came with.

We found a nice quiet corner far from anyone else and talked after getting our tea.

"I don't know how much I can say," Stella explained. She pushed her seat back and forth for a few moments. "I'm not Grace and I'm not a tinker."

"You built all that equipment, though," Tattletale noted. She stiffened slightly. "Didn't you?"

"Yes, but we only knew to assemble some components. Grace was trying to map the network, understand its structure. She wanted to find the core." Stella smiled grimly. "Of course, we thought there was something wrong. Like a sickness. Something we could cut out, but that's exactly the problem."

Scion had been cut out and without him, the network was falling apart.

"And the quantum brainwaves?" I asked.

"All humans have them," Stella offered. "Even non-parahumans. They have the same pattern as the network's communication stream."

"They might have set themselves up that way," Veda proposed. "I doubt it's a coincidence."

"They would have had to match us somehow to connect to us," Tattletale added. "Communication to our powers is a two-way street. They just block it to make it effectively one way."

"As far as we know," I argued. "They have to be getting feedback from us." I knew Administrator was actively aware of me, and that meant I was actively aware of her without being aware of it. I think. "Our end just isn't conscious. There are safeguards in place to stop us from seeing what's happening."

"Grace excited our brainwaves," Stella continued. "It was easier with children, especially those with dormant pollentias."

Of course. "You were all waiting to trigger. You're connected to the network."

"Yes," Stella confirmed. "There were side effects from her efforts. We got faster. Smarter. Stronger. We could reach each other through the brainwaves."

Passive effects of connecting to the Shards? Doing the things they did must take massive computing power, and I knew they weren't 'entirely free.' Maybe by tapping into the network with the kids, Cranial had inadvertently given them a sort of off-trigger. Nothing all that fancy. Just the basic functions their waiting powers could perform.

Parahumans might not be actively telepathic but—

I gawked. In a hushed tone, I mumbled, "Telepathy is real. The brainwaves are quantum. They can be in more than one place at a time. Connect one set of brainwaves to another, and you're effectively talking to someone else without saying a word."

"This is likely how many master powers function," Veda elaborated.

"Thinkers too," Tattletale suggested. "We know things we can't possibly know. It's an expression of our Shards processing data around us…" She sat up straighter. "Negotiator. I'm not Sherlock Holmes... I'm a sub-process of the alien's radio."

"It's all about improving their ability to function," I realized. "What's fantastical to us, is fine-tuning mundane tasks to them."

"They must have a broader goal." Veda pushed her teacup back and forth, not really drinking from it. "Did any of the Shards you spoke to explain the ultimate goal of their life cycle?"

"What is the purpose of any life cycle?" Stella asked back.

It seemed like a stupid question, but it wasn't. The answer was direct and clear.

"To live," I stated.

Stella smiled. "Isn't that what we all want?"

Sometimes the dumbest answer is the correct one. There was no overarching evil scheme here. The Shards weren't villainous masterminds, not in their way of thinking. They were an organism and like all organisms, they wanted to live.

Our conversation paused as a waitress approached. She smiled and set out several cups of tea for us. We tried to be polite, but I think she caught onto her presence being an interruption and quickly left.

We gave it a few minutes before continuing.

Tattletale scoffed and flicked a fingertip at her cup. "Yeah, except their way of living is devouring entire planets like a bunch of parasites."

"That too," Stella agreed.

It doesn't have to be that way.

Living things change.

Scion is dead.

We could do things another way now. We had that choice if we could just take it.

"One second." Tattletale rose abruptly. She grabbed my wrist and pushed herself away from the table. "We'll be right back."

"Hey!"

I yanked my hand free because I didn't need her to pull me. Tattletale didn't relent, indicating with her hands and eyes to move away from Stella and the table. Veda started asking a question, and I began to turn, but Tattletale made a move to grab me again.

"Stop," I warned.

"Then get over here," she hissed.

She stepped back, moving toward the bathroom. With a roll of my eyes, I followed. Apparently, even on the same side we still didn't get along.

Tattletale moved toward the restrooms. With so few people in the cafe, it was about as isolated as we could get without leaving the building.

"What are you doing?" Tattletale growled. "And no bullshit. I knew you were keeping one last thing close to the chest but this takes the cake."

My brow rose. "And what would that be?"

"You're colluding with your Shard," she snarled. "You actually think it's your friend."

And that's why I was keeping that one last thing close to the chest.

It was basically the only thing I'd kept almost entirely to myself. Only Veda knew everything I'd experienced with Administrator. Even then, Veda only knew the basics. I never told her about seeing Nine Eyes when Noelle died, or that Administrator had tried to understand the pain of losing my mother and recognized it in its own loss of Scion.

He might have been impending doom to us, but to them?

To them, he was probably something akin to a father or a king. They lost him. However much that had saved us, we couldn't deny what it meant to them. Not if we wanted to find a way forward.

"There it is again," Tattletale accused. She pointed a finger at me. "I thought Count told you that these things are basically war machines and you understood that."

Narrowing my gaze, I explained, "I understand her point of view. My experience leads me to disagree."

Tattletale gawked. "How do you know your power isn't manipulating you to restart the cycle?"

Because flowers don't represent war. "Because I know."

Tattletale—Sarah—looked at me with a mix of disbelief and confusion. She clearly wanted to say something but was reading me and thinking. No doubt she had another one of her insightful, but insulting, observations in her pocket.

I'd give her some credit. She wasn't entirely wrong when she accused me of acting out of spite. Being more angry than bold. I could admit that to myself now. Her delivery might have been shit, but delivering the truth in the worst way possible didn't make it not the truth.

"And what's your plan then?" I asked. "Whatever these things are, they're older than any of us. They've probably destroyed dozens, hundreds, of planets before Earth. Trillions of lives ended." I leaned in and glared. "You want to nuke the site from orbit? Only way to be sure? I don't think it'll work."

Tattletale tensed up, hands at her sides.

"Well?" I continued. "Out with it Tattletale. What's your plan? Do you think just stopping Teacher is going to fix everything broken in the world? Who's being the naive one now?"

She glared at me. "Been waiting for a chance to get that out, haven't you?"

Hell yes. "We can't kill them. These things can reach across dimensions. They're the kind of things Lovecraft wrote horror fiction about. We're lucky to have a chance at all."

"And you want to spend it trying to play house with your personal eldritch abomination?"

"Yes."

I didn't believe for a moment that all of this built up to some obvious double-cross… They weren't that clever. They couldn't even communicate with us directly. They didn't understand us. They had no capacity to manipulate as Tattletale suggested…. Right?

"I'm pretty sure my power fucks with me," she whispered. "Shows me the worst. Makes me believe that if I don't do something drastic, something terrible will happen."

"Convenient," I replied. Though, it would explain things.

"That's how my power tries to drive conflict, and I think it takes a fairly good understanding of things to work."

"And the Simurgh is a master manipulator," I countered. "Curiously, they don't all seem to be on the same level." I turned away, not prepared to debate this with a thinker and not interested in trying until I'd have more time to think. "And who knows. Maybe your power just likes fucking with you."

"I think they're fucking with all of us," she grumbled.

I returned to the table and sat back down. Veda gave me a quick understanding nod. No doubt she'd seen the entire conversation through my glasses.

"How many of the 'Shards' did you speak to?" she asked.

"Many," Stella answered. "Um, not personally. There are a lot of them. We all talked to different ones."

"I would like to know as many as you can tell me, and if any of them mentioned others."

I looked at Veda ready to ask why.

Connections.

"You want to try and map the network," I realized. "Like Cranial was trying to do."

"It may be useful information," Veda posited. "Presumably, the connections of the 'Shards' to one another are relevant. We may learn something from them. Cranial was also correct about the network collapse. We should not discount that her interest in finding the 'core' has some basis."

We might need to find it ourselves.

"I'm always willing to let you scan my brain," Stella announced. I stared at her, unsure if she'd said that. "It's fine. Grace had equipment that detected quantum brainwaves and tracked them. You could probably make one yourself."

"We could do it," Veda told me. "We might have to refine the system we already use to detect master influences."

I nodded. "We can make arrangements if you're okay with that."

"We want to help," Stella assured me. "We know that Grace was an insane madwoman to you, but to us she was…" Stella bowed her head and averted her eyes. "It's complicated. We understood her, and why she did what she did."

Yeah. Kind of like Scion for the Shards. Except, "She wanted to save the world."

"She was wrong about what was wrong with it, but not that something was wrong." Stella lifted her eyes and met mine. "The world is still twisted, and more will follow Grace if it doesn't change."

"We'll make a schedule." Tattletale plopped herself down into her seat. She lifted her cup and drank all her tea in one gulp.

I watched her and she watched me back. This is going to be a thing.

"I can construct the same kind of scanner the PRT uses," Veda revealed. She turned her cup back and forth, not really drinking it. "The device is one of Dragon's designs. I would only require a week to produce and transport the machine."

"We'll cooperate," Stella promised.

I lifted my own cup. Might as well drink it before it went cold. "You said they had other ideas. The Shards. Can you elaborate on that more?" It got skipped over as we'd talked, but it was exactly what we needed to know.

Tattletale pointedly looked away from me while Stella thought. Yeah. That was going to be a thing.

"Some of them want to restart the cycle," Stella stated. Great. I could feel Tattletale glaring into the side of my skull. "They weren't very friendly to us, and I don't think they liked Lalah's presence. They thought of her like a sickness or a disease."

Lowering my cup from my lips, a word came to mind. "Corruption."

"Yeah. Like that. She was better at talking to them than we were. She knew what they meant and they… Some of them listened to her."

I ignored the feeling of Tattletale glaring at me and leaned forward. "Tell me."

I did not get the answer I expected.

"Yes. Some want to restart the cycle," Stella reiterated. "They're constantly trying to find a way to stabilize the network."

"And they attack the others?" Veda inquired.

"Sometimes. Some of them don't know what to do about those that disagree."

"Disagree how?" I asked.

Stella frowned. "Some have lost hope. They don't know what to do and they don't think anything can be done. They think it's all broken and it'll always be broken."

That also sounded familiar.

"Others think they can fix the network but not restart the cycle. They want to find other solutions to the problem. A lot of them though…" Stella trailed off for a moment, thinking. She sighed, and ended, "A lot of them don't think about it at all. I'm not sure all of them are capable of knowing what's happening. Some are simpler than others. Not as smart, or maybe 'aware' is a better word."

I glanced at Tattletale and she glanced at me. She frowned and I didn't need to ask to know what she was thinking. She took that as proof that she was right. That Administrator was running some kind of long con.

"What about cooperation?" I asked.

"Cooperation?" Stella turned the word around and shrugged. "I guess. The Waste is like that. I've never met its host, though. It's a bit like Warp, but where Warp is fine being alone, the Waste isn't. It feels lonely. Cast aside."

"The Waste is an odd name," Veda noted.

"That's what it calls itself," Stella replied. "The rest of the Shards close to it don't pay it much mind."

"Close Shards?" I cocked my brow. "Like a family?"

"A cluster."

That was a term I'd heard before. "Shards that are connected more closely than others."

"They're all connected together. Some are more connected than others though. A lot of them don't think about the others." Stella rolled her eyes suddenly and sighed. "It can get confusing. Like, once I was talking to Darkness, and then suddenly it wasn't Darkness talking, it was a Shard calling itself Night. I'm not sure where the line is between some of them and I don't think they recognize the lines so much."

"Darkness and Night see themselves as the same being?" I asked.

"They all see themselves as the same being. And they're not."

With a sigh, I rubbed at my temple. I could feel a headache starting. Why was Shard stuff always such a mindfuck?

"A few of them don't seem to care about what happens to the Network at all," Stella continued.

Veda's lips pursed and then pursed again, as if testing the expression. "That is strange."

"I kind of get it," Tattletale quipped. She waved the waitress down and held up her empty cup. "Families are shit sometimes."

The waitress came over, took the empty cup, and left.

"Warp only seems to care about Vista," Stella continued. "About supporting her. I don't think it cares or even knows what's happening around it."

"Is that common?" Veda asked.

"Yes. Some will talk about it. Others don't seem to care to talk about anything." Stella nodded to me. "Like Administrator. I don't know if it's that they don't care, or if they're just not paying attention to the Firmament."

I thought back to that place 00 took me. "There are other places they can be. Administrator…" Rising from my seat slightly stared into the wood of our table. "When I first went there—to the Firmament—I think she was sleeping." Her body had been wrapped around the crystals on that platform, not moving until I arrived. "Nine Eyes. Administrator doesn't pay that much attention to that part of herself. She's looking somewhere else."

Tattletale rolled her eyes. "How can you possibly know that?"

"I know."

"They talked about other places," Stella said. "There are others, though I don't know how any of them work."

She got that long solemnity on her face again and she turned toward the window. The stars were still out there, hanging over the water. The light rippled in a way I'd never seen before. Those ribbons of stellar shine were above and below. It was beautiful.

Behind Stella, the waitress came around the corner with a new cup. Tattletale rose from her seat to intercept the woman.

"I think Lalah asked us to stay to protect us," Stella mused. "We wouldn't have survived if we came back then. We weren't ready. We were still too close to Grace and what she needed from us." She looked at me. "We are ready now."

I nodded to her. "I think so too." And we need the help.

"How did you do it?"

My head snapped up. "Hm?"

Stella repeated herself. "How did you bring us back?"

Tattletale came back with her cup and stopped.

Shit. "I—Um."

"You…have no idea, do you?" Tattletale sighed. "No, you do. You just have no idea what it means."

Stillness and Conclave.

I only knew their names and that they were the pieces of Administrator who helped me create the GN Drive. From what Stella said, clustered Shards were… Fucking weird. I didn't know. I wasn't sure what the relationship was. Were they working with Administrator, or could they work against her? Against me?

"00 is a strange machine," Veda proposed. "It has capabilities we haven't seen in previous Gundams."

"It's the Twin Drive," I whispered. "There's something about the GN Drive." Something Administrator wants me to understand. "Putting two together changes things." I looked at Stella and explained, "I haven't been able to replicate what happened before."

"You haven't returned?" Stella asked.

"No. We can't get the system to stabilize long enough."

"We are probably lucky it worked the first time," Veda contemplated. "Or there was a factor at play we don't appreciate."

I didn't have an idea what that could be. "Do you remember anything about how you reached the Firmament?"

Stella shook her head no. "We were following a program."

"And that place I found you? Do you know what that is?"

"Place?" Stella tilted her head. "The Firmament?"

"I didn't find you there." I sat forward. "I found you… It was like a void. The only ones there were Administrator and me. Well, and Lalah. And my m—" I stopped myself and sat back down. "You weren't there."

"I don't know what you mean," Stella replied.

She hadn't really been there? Then how did I hear her or know—Administrator.

Lalah had already left. It couldn't have been her. I had no idea what was going on. I'd been in the middle of fighting Hashmal and dealing with some serious emotional revelations. I had no clue how to reach the kids. If they'd been in the Firmament the whole time or perceived me as being there, that had to be Administrator?

"How did you see me?" I asked.

"We didn't," Stella answered. "We felt you." Her finger tapped her head. "Here." Her finger stopped and her eyes narrowed. "How did you hear us?"

"…I don't know."

Would it kill someone to just give me the damn answer at some point?

I was pretty done with 'more questions for answers' for one afternoon. Stella and the kids weren't going anywhere. We still had time to figure things out. I was honestly still pretty relaxed from the rest of my afternoon too and didn't quite want to ruin it.

"We can talk again," Stella promised. "It's nice to finally let some of these things out… Maybe that's another reason why Lalah asked us to stay."

Veda and I paused on the street. "To work things out for yourselves?"

"Maybe," Stella considered. "And maybe to make some of the Shards open up too."

Begin the conversations that have to com—I winced at a spike of pain in my head. Damn headaches.

"Something wrong?" Tattletale asked.

"It's nothing." Well, I was pretty sure it was something. 'What' remained an open question.

Stella tilted her head as she watched me, brow furrowing. Rubbing at my temple with two fingers, I turned away and waved over my shoulder. Fuck this hurts. "We'll talk again. It's been enough for one day."

"Alright," Stella replied. "We'll be waiting to help."

My head hadn't hurt that much in a long time. Fortunately, it didn't last long. About a block down from the cafe the pain vanished completely.

Veda and I doored back to the house.

"That was enlightening," Veda offered. "And not entirely clear."

"Tell me about it." I smelled food in the air. Something with pork. "It'll wait. The end of the world isn't tomorrow. Let's go eat. Dad should be home."

I started toward the door to my room and Veda followed. "I'd like to talk about Administrator."

"Sure." I turned down the hall. "We can talk over dinner."

"Taylor."

"What?" I started down the stairs and Dad was in the living room watching the TV with Aisha.

Veda started to speak, but I'd already reached the bottom of the stairs.

"Hey," I called. "How was your—"

Dad jerked and fumbled for the remote. Aisha made some clever comments about timing. Veda looked at me, worriedly.

I stared at the screen. Dad had successfully managed to mute the TV but not change the channel.

The headline was right there.

Winslow Nine speak to press ahead of trial.

Madison and Julia were front and center, with their parents and Copeland. Lots of other Blue Cosmos types I recognized. All set and ready to lie. Claim they did nothing wrong. Sophia did it all. They were innocent little pretty girls who'd never hurt a fly. They didn't want to do what they did to me.

"Taylor," Dad cooed. "You—"

My hands balled at my sides.

The pain of a thousand tears. My old friend.