A Waken 17.13

"Everyone needs to evacuate from these events," Relena said to the camera. "Please. Regardless of what you want from the world, you will never have it if you're dead. Protect yourselves and protect the people around you."

Fate can take strange turns, and yet looking back…it seemed the most natural thing in the world.

Relena was still on the street. Paris, I think. What had changed were her surroundings. Rather than standing amid chaos and madness, she had reporters and police with her. They reported and called out, identifying violent attacks, battles with Phantom Pain, and broken triggers.

Capes were there. Two Haros were present as well as a group of thinkers. Aisha was shadowing her constantly, watching those who passed by her. Lisa had donned a domino mask and had everyone organized and coordinated.

All the while, Relena continued speaking. Telling people to be smart about what they were doing, rather than blindly angry or desperately afraid.

She glanced to a corner, her eyes narrowing before she broke off and said, "There is a broken trigger event in White Chapel, London. Please stay in your homes and off the street. The power is not able to penetrate solid walls. Stay inside and you will remain safe until the event has been dealt with."

She'd become the emergency broadcast system for the entire world.

And that was just one of the dozen things Veda was doing.

"The quarantine is breached," her avatar declared behind me. "The local Protectorate team is being overrun. I am evacuating them now."

Chevalier grimaced. "We don't have the manpower to deal with all this. Even with Londo Bell and corporate teams pitching in. There are too many crises."

The square—Times Square, I think—was organized chaos much like the Paris street Relena was on. Police. Troopers. Capes. National Guard. The Marines. The actual effort was being coordinated at the PRT building in Houston, but the square had been converted into a staging area. Thanks to Veda and Richter's programs, we were getting information on triggers almost as soon as they happened. In cities at least. It let us build teams to try and contain them and then send reinforcements to counter or neutralize the powers.

A lot of them were dying. Better to kill one life and save hundreds more than wait for the trigger to run its course and see who survived.

"You could try looping us in."

"We have dozens of coordinating capes showing up left and right," Chevalier said in an even tone. He turned his head, looking up at the suit beside him incredulously. "We can identify those that are Londo Bell or corporate affiliates. What we can't identify is who all of you are."

"You know who I am," Leet said blithely.

"Leet," Prism grumbled, arms crossed over her chest.

"Zero will do."

I raised my head and turned my ear.

"Hey!" Riley snapped in the other ear. "Pay attention! There's a seventy percent chance this whole thing explodes! Do you want this to work or not?"

I scowled, thinking back. "That's one hundred and thirty percent."

"There's overlap where it works and still explodes."

"And how do you know this?"

"It's all just one giant brainwave when you think about it."

I felt pretty sure it wouldn't explode. More likely the GN Drives burned out and became unusable. Fingers crossed.

I didn't have time to ponder all the other things I could ponder.

I had work to do.

Pushing my saber back into the main fuselage of the Raiser unit, I continued directing the conduits and circuits. Simply making a strong GN Field wasn't enough. That had been my focus almost since the start. Get the field more stable. Make it last longer. Retain more GN Particles in the field so they didn't slip away.

It needed to be bigger.

Restriction. Restriction.

I needed to project the GN Field outward so I could cover an area in it. Create a field in which I could transmit… Which… The more I thought about it the more my stomach turned. I didn't know what would happen if I did this, but if I didn't?

"The Madison situation is worsening," Veda impressed on us. "I am redirecting available capes to the scene. The nearby Marine division is mobilizing. Can you convince them not to?"

"I can try," Chevalier said. "It only takes one master or stranger to create a massacre…"

"We can help," Leet noted.

Chevalier turned, forming a united front with Prism and a half-dozen other Protectorate capes. "I get nervous when dozens of coordinated and organized capes appear from thin air."

I glanced toward Veda and tapped a finger on my phone.

Taylor: How many of them are there?
Veda: approximately 92

That probably didn't include the thinkers or anyone else he was hiding. Other capes arrived with Leet around. I noted that only two of them had the sense of being Pets. The others were all...a mixed bag. Bit of anger. Bit of idealism. A few crazies. Leet was the hardest to get a read on.

Looking at him was like looking through water for some reason... The light coming off his suit?

Possibility.

What the hell could Leet produce with his power if he put his mind to it?

AI for one, if he is Zero.

"You want help or not?" Squealer asked. She was laying across the hood of the car she drove in on, her expression honestly bored. "Not like I give a shit about you twats."

Leet's single eye swept sideways. "Squealer."

"Blah blah be nice blah blah."

"Who are you with?" Chevalier pressed.

"I'm not interested in pretending you don't know," Leet replied. He wasn't…and curiously, he was trying to signal something. "Do you have the luxury of the Spanish Inquisition right now?"

He doesn't even like David.

Curiosity.

What is he playing at?

"Veda," I whispered.

"The battle in Chicago is ongoing," she answered in my ear.

"So is the chance of this stuff blowing up in your face," Riley added.

I inhaled and, as much as I disliked it, let myself start slipping into my power. Faintly, I became aware of the haze of something working. Something reaching through me and manipulating what I was working on. That. We needed that on a grander scale.

My eyes shimmered, and I felt all the capes around me more clearly. Lafter was right next to me, standing guard in Kyrios while I worked on some 'repairs.' And she was talking to Dinah. About me. They were worried.

Leet was hard to read. Guarded. His Shard too. Squealer was a bit more open. That mostly resulted in her Shard's hostility bleeding through and snapping at Administrator and me. Quite a few Shards were not happy at the moment, though not all of them at me. It was a lot of noise. Noise I had a hard time putting together into anything more complex than 'this sucks.' The capes were mostly frustrated, focused and—

I raised my head and drew back from 00.

Chevalier stood behind me, lips set into a line.

My eyes narrowed. That was interesting. "You can see her."

His face tightened under his mask. "Her?"

If this worked out, the truth about powers might come out a lot sooner than expected. Maybe that would be for the best. Might be for the worst. It was always going to come out eventually.

"Give me a few more minutes." I checked my surroundings, which had changed somewhat. Veda was at my side and Lafter had moved Kyrios between Leet and me. "We're going to try and fix this."

"We?" Uncertainty set into the word like an anvil.

"Her and me," I clarified. I turned my attention back to 00. "I need Labyrinth."

"I need more than that."

I looked over my work. I'd completely rewired the backup antenna on the Raiser unit into an ugly mess. My power however told me that it would work. Ish. It might explode. "How much do you know about powers?"

"More than most. Less than I wished."

I glanced back at him. Raising a hand, I tipped my visor down. Chevalier hid his flinch well, but not well enough. My shimmering eyes were visible in his visor for a moment before I pushed mine back up.

"We know everything about powers, and we're going to fix this."

Chevalier tensed. "I'm not sure that's good enough."

"It's going to have to be. We don't have time to pick a fight with one another in the middle of all this." I sighed. In a low voice, I added, "It's also why we should just let Teacher's cronies help."

He did not relax. I didn't blame him. Chevalier knew plenty about what was going on but even I wasn't entirely sure this would work. We could make things worse… Though in this case that mostly meant the world ended sooner rather than later.

Chevalier inhaled and glanced at Lafter. Kyrios shrugged. He sighed.

"You were there when the fight started?" he asked. "The Triumvirate and…"

"Eidolon," I said. "I was there. I think he wanted to make a moment out of coming to the rescue… Then Alexandria smashed him in the face."

They drew him out. Got him somewhere less than ideal—anywhere but Houston—and now the story wouldn't be about Eidolon triumphantly returning to save the day. It was about a brawl in the middle of a crisis between the founders of the Protectorate.

Count is trying to kill him… But she'd have done that ages ago if she thought it would work.

Agreement.

"We don't have the coordination to handle all of this," Chevalier warned.

"Trust Veda," I told him. "Dragon could handle this. So can she."

"It's not a question of whether or not she can handle it," he replied. "We've still got the Defense Department shouting at us over what you did up north. Director Ral has been talking to the Parahuman Affairs Committee since the secession declaration hit the news."

"Then do what you need to do the way you need to do it," I replied. "Veda will fill in the lines with capes from Londo Bell."

"It would only be the results of a pragmatic observation of the events occurring around me," Veda noted. Her gaze was set on me though. Her face might not be the best at conveying her feelings, but I knew when she was worried.

She worried about me a lot.

"We weren't prepared for this situation," Chevalier lamented. "One crisis we could manage, but three..."

"That's the point."

For two of them, at least. Teacher's plan and the Simurgh's. They both went off at the same time. In that light, I supposed Count's plan didn't do much... Actually, it might have helped us. It forced all of us to immediately spread out and start dealing with the riots. By the time the broken triggers started happening, we already had capes all over the place handling crises.

The bitch set off global chaos just to get capes scrambling all over to deal with global chaos.

That's demented.

Notification. Efficient.

Administrator.

Consolation. Appreciation.

"Maybe now is like, not the best time?" Lafter looked back, turning Kyrios' head. "Still kind of a mess to deal with."

Right. "Where's Labyrinth?"

"Over here."

I started and turned. Elle was behind me with Mouse Protector and Gregor. "How long have you been—"

"We set a mousetrap," Mouse Protector jested.

"How does Miss Militia put up with you?"

"That's the secret! She doesn't! Also, I'm keeping the lightsaber."

"Fine." I did not care. My attention turned to Elle. "Are the people still trapped?"

"Yup," she said. "Put them in a world where everything is kind of frozen-y. They can't move much even if they want to."

"Could they?"

"She brought one out a few minutes ago to check," Gregor answered. "Still frozen."

I pressed my knuckle to my chin. "Probably locked in a loop like Aisha's was. The power doesn't know how to finish its configuration." Restriction. Restriction. Turning to Chevalier I said, "Go do what you do. I'm going to do what I do."

"Increase the cool factor?" Mouse Protector asked.

I stared. "Sure. Why not?"

With that Chevalier shook his head but turned away. We didn't have time for this right now and we both knew it. In times like this, there needed to be trust. Even when it came to the obviously suspicious.

"I'm going to start 00," I explained. "When I do, I need to go where you're stashing those people."

"Is this wise?" Veda's face was placid, but her tone wasn't. "We have not run sufficient simulati—"

With that, I embraced her.

She stiffened, glancing at me with confusion. "Taylor?"

I exhaled and couldn't… I didn't know what to say. Except, "It's gonna be okay."

Hopefully. I had no idea what was about to happen to me. There was just a feeling. A sense of finality. That the door was closing forever.

Unknown.

Doesn't matter.

I pulled back and climbed into my suit. 00's armor closed around me and I started the GN Drives.

Veda was looking away from me when the HUD flashed on. I frowned. It had occurred to me before, but it hit harder now. How much time would we have had if I'd never become so...involved? Nearly all my time went to trying to save the world or de-stressing from trying. I saw Veda every day and she was with me nearly every hour.

It hardly seemed like enough time.

I pushed 00 to stand, considering that the only way I'd have ever had the time to spend with Veda was to have never gone so far down the rabbit hole. It was too late now. I knew the stakes and the costs of failure. Billions of lives were on the line, human and Shard. I'd have to be a complete monster to turn away from that.

Ignorance is bliss. Orga was right. If I'd stayed ignorant, this all would have caught up to me eventually anyway.

I'd have had more time with Veda though. With Lafter. Dad. Maybe even Orga, which was...fluttery.

I suppose I'd just have to make sure whatever happened wasn't final.

"Labyrinth," I called. "Pull me in."

"If you say so."

She normally moved her hands about when she used her power despite the fact she didn't have to. She did again, raising a hand as 00 was pulled into one of her worlds. The air shimmered with ribbons of light. It was beautiful. All the lights were frozen as if in mid-movement.

I probably could have described it a lot more artfully in different circumstances.

As it was, people were frozen in place all around me, most precariously balanced on one of the ribbons. That didn't seem to pose much danger. Nothing around me was moving. Even 00, when I tried to move it, was absurdly sluggish.

The physics here have been altered.

It kept the several dozen people around me from moving. If I had to guess, the Shard hadn't been able to properly locate itself in its host. I could feel it drifting about, lost. It didn't know where to go or how to stop. The rest of the network was supposed to be helping it, but it kept getting contradictory data.

Locking the coronas in place wasn't intended to kill anyone. The Shard was, ironically, trying to avoid collateral damage.

I inhaled sharply.

This was it.

The endpoint of everything Administrator and I had done.

Confirmation.

With a swallow, I raised 00's head.

I'd held off on using the system since the battle against Hashmal. Not just because I hadn't needed it. I wanted to hide it. 00's abilities went far beyond anything my previous suits could do. While I suspected firmly that the Simurgh's vision of me was obscured, she could hit dangerously close to the mark. Without knowing what she could or couldn't do, hiding my ultimate trump card made sense.

Honestly, though, it scared me in a way.

What if I saw Mom again? What if I changed even more than I already had? Was there a point where I stopped being anything like human?

I think that fear affected me more than I'd wanted to admit. The GN Drives and their effects had always been a bit unpredictable. We kept finding new things they could do. Changing me as they were… I was afraid.

But fear is the enemy of all good things.

"Shine," I commanded. "Trans-Am."

Here we go.

Trans-AM

The GN Drives spun into a rapid whirl. The green light surrounding me turned to gold. The GN Field flickered, warped, and then shot out, spreading all around me. I could feel it. This was different from before. I wasn't in two places at once, or three. It felt more like being everywhere. Everywhere and everything all at the same time. There was no up, down, left, right, ground, air, sky.

The world was a bubble, wrapping around and through me all at once.

It fucking hurt.

My eyes burned. My skull splintered. My entire head was like one of those boards with the different shaped holes in it and someone was trying to jam the square block through the circle. Administrator reached through me and I screamed.

Connection.

I heard them all.

The Shards didn't know what to do. Some tried to fix the configurations only to make it worse. Others sabotaged it. They were arguing. Screaming. Shooting packets of data at one another like nukes that blew pieces of their minds apart.

I couldn't comprehend that.

Why were they trying to destroy each other?

Administrator's voice echoed. She reached out, telling them to stop and slow down. Were they not attacking one another? Was it all just chaos? Uncontrolled communication that was destroying them in the absence of some kind of order?

The chorus of rejections was deafening. She'd betrayed them. She'd usurped more than was her place. Her excuses didn't matter.

There was one though. It was close. Very close. It was desperate for a connection. Any connection, even if it was her. Its configuration was going wrong. It didn't know what to do.

It had been part of a close network. Not a cluster but a series of Shards that shared functions. The others weren't helping it. Two refused to connect. A third was attacking with junk—Not junk data.

Corrupted data? I tried to focus on it but I didn't understand it. It was all static. Gibberish. It sounded like a wail, almost. A wail that wasn't supposed to be there. Was it an attack? Corruption in the connection?

I had no idea.

Administrator focused on the pleading Shard and looked back past me.

The other eight were with me, watching her.

For a moment, I swore I could see it all. All the mirrors and their reflections. The way the entire network fit together. It was too much. I couldn't possibly comprehend all of it. Even trying felt like being flayed alive.

So loud. So loud I hadn't heard any of it until I looked at where the broken Shard was listening. The entire network was like one giant wailing static ball. Administrator was trying to get through it all. The Shard was distant. She didn't have a direct connection.

And the harder she pushed the more it hurt.

Administrator…

Destination.

Help me.

Negation!

She wasn't talking to me. I wasn't even sure she could hear me in all of this. I must be a whisper in all this noise.

She was talking to the others.

There was a constant cascade of objections as Administrator held the rest of her cluster back and outside of my mind. It all came in all at once. A cascade of vitriolic aggression. Administrator was still holding them back, trying to focus on me and the nearby Shard desperately pleading for help. Help the rest of the cluster refused to give.

Rejection.

The rest of the cluster wasn't cooperating. They either sat back and watched or actively tried to tell her to stop. Shard's don't simply 'tell' each other what to do. They don't 'argue' like that.

Authorization. Negation.

Query.

Destination.

Connection. Refusal.

Data streams slammed back and forth. Big. Small. Required. Unnecessary.

All from within.

My eyes widened.

Administrator wasn't ignoring me. She was shielding me. Trying to reduce the full brunt of what was happening.

Rejection.

Negation. Destination.

Obfuscation.

Objective.

Irrelevance.

Shut up!

I spun about in spite of the pain, glaring at the other eight inside the one.

This is what you've all been arguing about this entire time?!

I focused on the other Shards. I knew some of them. I'd felt them before. Many times. Stillness and Conclave. Prime Future. Regeneration. Avatar.

Who are you to judge her? At least Administrator is doing something! What are any of you doing?! Standing there and judging her for fucking trying?! While you do nothing! Cowards!

They tried to ignore me.

I wasn't alive to them. Not really. I was a host. The latest of many. One that some of them shouldn't even be connected to.

Don't you ignore me.

I stormed through, leaving the void behind and going somewhere else. It all happened so fast. I had my mind slamming into theirs. My eyes were bleeding. I think my body was seizing. Was I dying?

Stop it!

I forced them to look at me. I pulled them apart, separated the cluster into its whole pieces and screamed. I looked directly at Stillness and Conclave, the two after Administrator that I knew best. I never remembered them when I woke from my power but I knew them.

Is this what you want? To be the reason it all dies? Why did we do any of this? Why did we make any of it if everything's just going to die when we all tear one another apart?!

Prime Future was badgering something about waiting.

Laughable.

And how long will that take? A hundred years? A thousand? More? How many of you will even be left when another entity comes to 'pick you up.' I scoffed. What makes you even think it'll want you? Maybe it just takes your data and shreds you all.

Rejection.

It was like trying to debate with Blue Cosmos. There was a memory theory. An image hard to see in all the static. Someone had been here before. Two someones. Before me. Ages ago in their sense of time... Fortuna and Teacher.

This was where it happened. Where she tried to do something and he betrayed her.

Because that's what humans did.

We betrayed. No. No unity. You're wrong. Disorder. Hypocrite. Too much disorder to ever advance. Look at yourselves! You call that order?!

I stabbed a finger at them. At the static. The chaos. The complete breakdown of an entire species into nothing more than a rotting corpse. What were any of them doing about it? Nothing. They couldn't do anything about it. In their minds, nothing could be done.

Except Administrator had done something.

You want to stop her? Then fucking stop her! You're not doing anything. Sniping and badgering. Sitting on the damned sidelines! Acting like none of this matters to you.

Their response that it didn't matter to them was so ironic it made me laugh... And I couldn't see how we were any different. Confined to our own narrow perspectives. Unable to see beyond ourselves, even when we tried. The best any human could manage was hypotheticals and empathy.

We weren't any different, and with all the time they'd been watching, they hadn't noticed.

Even you? I turned to Stillness and Conclave. You're not going to do anything after everything we've done to get this far?

I didn't understand their answers. Or maybe I couldn't hear them. The whole of the world was adrift in a storming sea and not one of us had any idea where it was going.

It doesn't have to be this way...

Rejection. Correction.

And Scion wasn't supposed to die. He did. It's over. There's no going back!

I turned my back, grabbing hold of Administrator's hand and pushing her forward.

If it doesn't matter to you then shut up and get out of the way!

I barely had time to even see anything happen before it happened. The world wobbled and spun and slammed into me.

Avatar reached past me, shocking the other seven.

Administrator surged forward.

The Shard accepted the connection. Administrator, Conclave, Prime Future, and Regeneration engaged in a flurry of activity. They went back and forth, compiling and searching. I fell forward as they went ahead, tumbling until Administrator caught me and pulled me back up.

I had enough time to reel in shock as sections of 00's armor exploded. The plates quantized, peeling the suit back until it was only a thin shell around me. Wiping the blood from my eyes, I found Stillness watching. Compiling.

Administrator drew back, leaving Brandished Blade to complete his configuration.

"Let them go," I whispered, looking at the people still trapped in place. You can't leave them like that.

The Shard didn't seem to understand why it should care. Its task was complete. The configuration was final and it was ready to collect data.

Then Administrator threw a few stern streams its way. She pled to its sense of efficiency. I didn't like that, but it worked. The Shard quickly went about undoing its unnecessary connections before the configuration phase completed. One by one, the gemmas were folded up and erased.

The people around us felt the change.

And I could hear them. Almost as clearly as I could hear the Shards.

What's happening?

Is it over?

Are we dead?

Make it end.

Who is that?

It's not real.

That's Newtype.

Help me!

Who's talking?!

It was a chorus, and I remembered. Othala. This had happened before. When I was close to her. I heard all the voices in the Butcher's shard. Two dozen of them.

This was so much louder than that.

All humans had quantum brainwaves. There was no reason—once that channel was accessed—that any of us couldn't use it.

Dozens of people all screaming for help. Afraid. Confused. Not sure what was happening to them. What had we been thinking leaving them in here? It was too much. It felt like being squeezed on all sides, crushed into something smaller than a marble.

It neede—

The world peeled back. 00 hovered over the street where Labyrinth had whisked it away. The people were already popping back into the world one by one. EMTs and responders rushed to them. Checked on them.

At first.

I blinked, raising my head and hearing everything. It started to press down on me again, threatening to overwhelm me as the static had. I could endure it. I knew I could. Whatever changes had happened to me, they'd pressed me on. I could take this.

Everyone else couldn't.

As soon as the light touched them and they began to sense the world beyond their perspectives, they panicked. It was strange. Foreign. I tried to calm them down but they couldn't hear me over the cacophony of matching confusion.

Administration.

Administrator took my hand and she began to weave it all together. This was her purpose. Why she'd been created. She bridged the gaps and directed all the noise. Crafted the highways the Shards traveled on. The network had never been designed for any Shard to be alone.

They were meant to work together. We were meant to work together.

The bridges took shape. The elevators rose. The streets were forged and the nodes crafted. We shaped it all into something we knew. Something we'd dreamed.

The world shrank ever so slightly, closing itself into something the people around us could try to understand. All the while the perceptions were overlaid. The city street stretched to a curved horizon that folded up and into a ring. The stary sky expanded and the horizon stretched out. The ground fell away and the stars became the sky. The elevators bound it all together into the world that was so very close.

We just had to hold on.

Just a little longer.

Administrator looked out, numerous people feeling her presence. Their presence. Not just my Shards. All the Shards.

We were standing on the street again, but the street's appearance had altered. The whole was too big. No one could perceive it, but confined and given shape? It was smaller than the whole but bigger than what we'd had before.

We could connect and remain ourselves.

As... As if each of us were our own world. Our own collection of sense and sensation. If we ever stepped fully and entirely out of our world, we'd cease to be ourselves. We become lost in the sea of everything that was the world. Our worlds, our bubbles of self, gave us order. An order that we needed to survive. An order that needn't be the barrier between our ability to reach out and understand.

Reactions were still mixed. A police officer nearby was staring at Mouse Protector while she stared at her Shard. There was confusion there, but a sense as well. A dialogue beyond words as the three of them tried to sort it out and understand.

Lafter blinked, looking down at herself as she became aware of Navigator's presence. The Shard embraced her invisibly. It always had, ever since their connection was forged. It protected her.

A chorus of confusion rang in one ear, and I turned.

It wasn't a person. The people around me were starting. Glancing nervously. A few saw the light. Scion's name echoed in their minds, but I calmed them. It wasn't hard. I wasn't Scion. We weren't Scion. Scion was dead and what happened on Gold Morning would never happen again.

Not if Administrator and I had something to say about it.

The chorus came from somewhere else. A few voices all twisted together, in pain. Uncertain.

I reached for them, Administrator's hand closing over mine. The rest of the cluster connected, and we fixed what had been mutilated so long ago. Made it right.

Gregor collapsed, his clothes too small to fit him as his Shard managed to reconfigure itself. It hadn't known where to stop before. How far was too far? It never meant to make him a monster.

We—

Taylor?

I stared at her.

She stood across from us, among the hundreds of others. She was about as confused as I was but this wasn't nearly as much for her as it was for us. That didn't help the confusion. I could feel it. The way she sensed her own self. It was different from how I experienced it, and others too. But it was recognizable and familiar.

Veda.

She blinked in recognition and slowly, her hand rose to reach for me.

I took it, craning my head back. I focused on one of the ports at the northern end of the city. One of her servers was there, waiting in a shipping container. The quantum processors that were her mind were there.

Taylor.

I told you. I smiled and looked back at her. It's gonna be okay.

I reached past her, pressing my perception forward. Expanding my bubble. Several blocks west.

When I stepped out onto the street. The fighting had stopped. Everyone was aware that something was happening, but they were struggling to understand it. Not everyone was ready for change. Sometimes you needed to leave them be, and let them grow into it on their own.

That was the ideal.

Sometimes though, intervention had to happen.

They'd destroy themselves if nothing happened.

I held out my hand and took the host's fingers between mine. She was curled into herself, shaking and crying like the world around her rose up and became vapor. The vapor itself had stopped rising. No one was dying here, but it was chaos. The vapor pushed everything slightly out of phase. Made it misty. Spacious.

The capes had focused on containment.

That wasn't necessary now.

"What's your name?" I asked.

Her head raised, her world overlapping with mine as I stood over her.

"Toni," she answered.

I smiled at her. "Can you draw it all back in?" Administrator had finished helping the Shard configure itself. "Make it all go away?"

She did. It took her a moment, but her Shard was right there. It told her what to do.

They'd be okay.

I moved on, finding the next broken trigger. Then the next. And the next. Administrator and I went one-by-one. My body was still in 00 in the street, but my mind was free to wander within the field.

It was a lot bigger than we'd expected.

Growing, even.

The system was self-perpetuating when it reached this point. It would simply keep growing, spreading golden light in its wake. And as it spread we were there.

"Aiden," he said when I asked his name.

He huddled in the middle of the crowd, arms around his chest. He hadn't wanted to get caught up in things. He'd been trying to go home. He went by the PRT building because every kid did it. There was no way to know it would all come crashing down.

At least now the crowd was backing away. Fear, at first. When the wave of light hit them, many panicked. Then they were left to deal with the aftermath in their own ways. Some of them saw each other for who they were for the first time.

Though, I think Vicky already knew who Dean really was.

She'd just struggled to accept it. Seeing him standing there, out in front of everyone else and refusing to move even as insults, bottles, and rocks were thrown his way... Some people were braver still because they had no power. Because that's just who they were.

She hovered in the air just behind him, trying to come to terms with her feelings while Vista watched on.

She stretched the street a little wider. She'd only managed to get it so far apart before too many people had appeared for her to do much more. It did keep the mob away from the PRT building and the people Dean had gathered. Warp was close to her. He related to her. With the walls between them weakened, she could press her power further than she'd ever been able to before.

My mind was wandering.

Focusing on Aiden, I held out my hand for him.

We'd gotten to his Shard before it could break. Some of the Blue Cosmos crowd recoiled from him at first as the reality dawned on him. A Shard and its parahuman right in their midsts.

I helped Aiden up, holding his hand while Vista walked toward us. Some in the crowd around us entertained attacking. After all, wasn't that what they wanted to do? Do something about the 'cape problem.' Even if the problem was just children, and the trigger a product of their own aimless fury.

That thought echoed out from me. A few people stepped back, looking at themselves—really looking at themselves—for the first time in a long time.

Looking at each other. Really?

"What did you think was going to happen?" I asked, more than a little disappointed in their reactions. I wanted to blame them. I should blame them, maybe.

But they were just people.

We're all weak.

A few people recoiled from a man on my left. They scrambled back from that black edge that seemed to linger in the air. Some people are just ugly inside. He could deny it all he wanted, but right now, in this time and place? Everyone could see him for what he truly was.

He didn't care about justice or fairness or equality.

He was just dark and desperate to not be a lone spot of bile in the world.

"What's going on?"

I turned, looking down at Vista. She was looking up at Warp. Not directly, but she knew he was there. She vaguely had a sense that he was connected to her. She didn't know what he was any more than Vicky had realized those three invisible hers were the Waste trying to protect her.

"This is Aiden," I said. Gently, I encouraged him forward. "Can you watch him for a bit? He shouldn't be alone right now."

Vista turned her head around. Missy blinked, glancing past Aiden for just a moment and seeing another presence there. "Um... I guess? What—"

I crossed the city. Administrator and I spread ourselves wide, fixing and reconnecting the Shards around the Factory.

Cyclops—he wasn't the first—rejected the help and we respected his choice. He'd taken strength from what made him different and didn't want it to change. We corrected his Shard's mutilation, and his Shard left him be.

Sleeve shuddered, the layers of excess flesh drawing back. Bough's mechanical arms broke. They didn't fit anymore as his body returned to the correct proportions. Fortunately, Trevor was there to break the fall.

Sveta collapsed to the ground, shaking as her body reformed beneath her.

I wasn't surprised when Orga pulled his coat off and threw it over her without a moment's hesitation. That's just who he... Huh.

He turned, looking for a few moments before realizing I wasn't physically there. Just... there.

This is awkward...

He swallowed, keeping his confusion in check. The sensation had hit him like it hit everyone else. He could see outside himself. See—

"Mika!"

Barbatos burst out of the alley, charging into the crowd and grabbing the rifle before the assailant had made it through the crowd. The gunmen had stopped when the wave of light hit them, but most had quickly resolved to go through with their attack rather than figure out what was happening.

Barbatos crushed the man's hand and the gun's handle. When the pain of the broken hand hit him, Mikazuki bit the inside of his cheek. He wasn't as dark inside as he thought he was. He could be sometimes. There was a sense of life, he felt, in struggling to survive. He liked it.

But he didn't enjoy inflicting pain.

We all had our dark corners.

For a moment I stepped across the street. The frontal assault was a distraction. That part didn't surprise me, and I supposed the next part really shouldn't have either.

He was in an apartment across the block, plotting with three regular men and a pair of capes. Mercenaries like himself. Not capes I'd recognize. A tall man with some kind of negation power, and a thin woman with beady eyes. A power blocker and a teleporter.

Not a bad plan and I probably should have seen it coming. It's not like we'd found him when he ditched Blue Cosmos.

Ali al-Saachez was not a stupid man. A lost cause was something he recognized, but he'd never exactly run from dancing on the razor's edge before, taking a gamble that had to be taken.

He couldn't just run away. Even if he ditched Blue Cosmos and Azrael, I'd still go after him the first chance I got. A few of his mercenary associates—he didn't have friends anymore—could shield him from Dinah, but that wasn't enough.

Veda could find him anywhere he went.

The only way he could be free, was if she was dead.

The man flinched as my presence entered the room but I wasn't going to stop him. I didn't have to. Miss Militia's eyes were resolved. She'd been waiting for this chance. To finish it once and for all, on her terms.

I wasn't going to interfere.

He flinched, throwing himself to the side and to the floor as the Gatling gun tore into the room. Splinters, cushioning, and dust poured into the air. The power nullifier was thrown against the back wall and slid down to the floor. The three gunmen he'd hired were all killed one by one.

The teleporter reacted quickly, moving first to the roof and then looking down. She appeared beside Hana, knife at the ready. Hana's gun was readier.

She shot the mover in the head and jerked her pistol down to fire a second shot into the girl's chest.

Ali wasted no time. He sprinted from the floor. He grabbed up one of the gunmen's rifles and retrieved a grenade from where it had fallen on the floor. He went low but with his feet firmly planted. The teleporter's body hit the ground and Hana brought her power around. She followed the sound and fired.

The bullets went over Ali's head as he pulled the pin.

"There's a face I haven't seen for a long time."

Hana said nothing. She fired again and threw herself back. Her body slammed into the door, knocking it off its hinges and splintering the frame. The grenade slapped the ground and kept rolling, exploding in the hall beyond.

He aimed for the wall and fired. Quick bursts. Just behind the doorway. A few spots high and low in the room. Hana stayed low and focused.

She'd left her scarf behind.

Ali wasn't Miss Militia's business to close.

He was Hana's.

Ali ran in before the smoke cleared. He emptied the remaining rounds of the magazine before he got too close and tossed the rifle away. With his free hands, he grabbed the teleporter's corpse by the collar and heaved the body up.

Hana came out of the room, rifle firing. The corpse rattled and Ali threw her forward. He drew his sidearm quickly and fired after the body, aiming too high as Hana ducked. She rolled the body over her back and came up with a pistol in both hands.

Ali batted one hand aside and turned sideways to avoid the double shot from the second.

He was like Mikazuki in a way.

He never felt more alive than in these moments. On the edge between life and death. Knowing that the next moment could be his last. Unlike Mikazuki, Ali enjoyed pain. When it wasn't his, at least.

"You're still rusty, minesweeper!"

Hana's elbow met his fist and her knee struck his thigh. He let himself drop, aiming for Hana's gut as he fell. Her foot came down as he fired, striking his shoulder. She flinched for only a moment, the barest flicker of pain in her eyes.

They both collapsed to the floor.

Hana fired as she fell and Ali rolled onto his side to avoid a direct hit to the chest. Two stabbing pains roared up from his bicep and hip. He wheeled around, pushing himself off the wall while Hana tried to aim.

He tried to press the barrel to her chest and winced as a bowie knife went right into his arm.

His gun dropped and he chose to punch her in the throat instead. The knife tore his arm open but wrenched it from her hand as he swung. His strike missed its intended target but still made Hana gasp as she fired. The shot went over his shoulder and he grabbed the hilt of his knife. The blade in his arm vanished, reappearing in her other hand as a large caliber pistol.

Drawing his blade from his belt, Ali cut her wrist and forced Hana against the wall. She raised a foot as he did, kicking him square in the chest and throwing him off her. In a split second, as she tried to aim, he swung his knife underhand and let it go. The blade flipped and Hana just barely turned her face away. The blade cut clean across her cheek and nose before burying itself in the wall.

From the corner of his eyes, Ali spotted a black grip. He grabbed the gun as Hana fired two shots blind.

One struck him in the gut and kept going.

When he brought the pistol up and aimed it at Hana's head, she'd looked back his way and did the same.

The sound of heavy breathing filled the entryway, mixing with the smell of gunpowder.

Hana heaved.

Ali coughed. He smiled. "Brings you back, doesn't it?"

Hana's gaze didn't waver.

He switched to Kurdish, musing, "No bullshit. No fancy costumes. Just alive and dead and that blurry little space between."

"Why did you kill Tanya?"

Ali needed a moment to remember the name. I'd never heard it before, but there was a pain when Hana said it. Betrayal. The first of many.

Ali's eyes looked left, toward a window.

"There you go." He lived for risks, but he wasn't dumb. Some fights weren't worth it. "Ruining the moment. Don't disappoint me now."

"Tell me," Hana pressed.

"You know why," Ali answered.

"Tell me!" she snarled.

What a stupid question. That's the only way Ali could see it. He wasn't capable of going beyond himself, even now.

"Naïve. You think she'd be grateful when it was over? Because you were nice to her while holding her hostage?" Ali bit back a laugh. "Daddy dearest wouldn't forget us. He'd hunt us down. She had to die. They all had to die! They were invading our country!"

"Tanya didn't make that choice!" Hana snapped. "She was a child!"

"We were children," Ali charged. He got one foot square on the floor. "How much mercy did we get?"

"That's not—"

"I'll betray the world a thousand times before I ever let it betray me." He grinned, steadying his aim. "I'll wage war on the whole world if that's what it takes. To prove that I'm alive."

Hana's lips parted and her hand wavered. He took his moment and started to run for the window.

"I never betrayed you." Hana exhaled and steadied her arm. "And I forgive you for betraying me."

Ali froze.

He parted his lips to speak.

"Goodbye."

Hana pulled the trigger.

He fired his gun in reply, seeing a bullet splatter into Hana's collar before her second shot went through his eye and out the back of his skull. I'd seen a few people die since the GN Field bursting, but...

The gun clattered from her hand, and Hana heaved. She hadn't expected it to feel good. She expected to feel something but…hurt? After everything he'd done, what he became… It shouldn't hurt, but it did.

We don't always get to choose the people we love.

Looking down at his corpse, I figured we didn't always get to choose the path that would make us who we were.

It was twisted to think about, but if Ali hadn't become who he became, then would there even be a Miss Militia? Would Hana be who she was without that experience?

Pain was as much a part of our experience as anything. We grew from those tiny destructions. We advanced past them. The thought ran at complete odds with my desire. A world where people like Ali al-Saachez didn't exist, was a world without people like Hana too.

"Door please," I called.

I said nothing else.

I moved on, my awareness passing by Stratos as Riley stepped through the portal. Red followed her with a first aid kit held over his head. The two of them looked at one another for a moment. He recognized her instantly. He'd seen her face through a scope more than a few times.

"It's okay," I told him as I made my exit. "Hana's hurt."

Query.

Don't know.

Did two wrongs, with enough time, make a right, and did that make it all worth it in the end? If Emma had never done what she did, would I exist as I existed? If Scion hadn't been killed, what would Administrator be?

Was it worth having Ali al-Saachezs in the world to have Miss Militias? I didn't have the answer to that paradox. Maybe there wasn't one. Maybe it was all just one big mess, and what was needed wasn't some grand answer. No grand answer existed. There were no perfect words that would make it all okay.

It'll reach Madison soon. Can we do something about all that?

Certainty.

We'd caught up with everything else in our range. New York. Washington. Boston. Jersey. Part of it was the distraction of the burst itself. Part of it was that Administrator and I were expanding our connections. Every Shard we fixed was—with a few exceptions—a Shard willing to help fix others.

It was just a bandaid.

The real damage lay deeper than this. Deeper than we could reach without... Guess we'd have to figure that out. Maybe there was a lesson in that. It wasn't about grand answers. There were no grand answers.

It was about doing what you could with what you had. Maybe there was never going to be a world without people like Ali or David or Kaiser. We were all weak. Some of us would always delude ourselves into thinking weakness was strength. That the flaws were in everyone else and not ourselves.

But it didn't have to end like that, with a corpse on the floor.

The difference between zero and one was as infinite as the difference between one and a thousand. Lives could be changed by the smallest of things. Hana knew it. If she'd noticed where he was going sooner, if she'd said something different, could he have been saved from what he became?

I blinked, staring at the boy as he walked past me.

His hair. His face. I knew him even if he were younger than any time I'd known him.

And he wasn't really there.

Glancing to my side, I saw Hana. She was my age. Her lips moved but no words came out. With a thought to Administrator, I looked around the desolate city. Bullet holes covered the buildings and craters filled the streets. It was a cold world, burned by the sun rather than brightened.

The world that made someone like Ali al-Saachez.

I looked out with her, watching him walk toward a dark shadow. She pleaded with him, but it didn't matter. People don't reach for a light they can't see.

That was why I'd gone so far, wasn't it? Why we spread Veda's servers so far and wide no one would ever find them. Why I planned to launch them into space where no one would ever be able to reach her.

One way or another, Veda was the light. The one who could complete a century and more of work to give the world a chance. We made her for that purpose. Neither Administrator or I was petty enough to make an entire being simply to have a friend.

Veda was more than that.

She knew she would be more than that.

The shadowed ground cracked before Ali could reach it.

The pillar shot into the sky.

All around me heads turned. Eyes widened. This space was not physical, nor was it immaterial. It was ephemeral, brief. But it was real. For this moment, everything was pulled back. All the veils. All the dark corners. All the masks.

We didn't need them here.

There was just us.

Us and our dreams.

The ring spread out, wrapping over the sky as the colonies rose. The Shards lifted from the Earth, gathering in Administrator's hand under the moon. The flower grew, brilliant red petals blooming in a starlit sky as our world overlaid the ephemeral space 00 had created.

I held my hands up, reaching for it.

We were so close. Just a little more. Just a little bit further.

Can you dream, what I dream?

At my side, Hana's hand rose, her fingers first reaching for the image of Ali when she thought she could have saved him. He looked back at her and smiled.

"Can't save the dead, minesweeper. You don't need me to tell you that."

Her hand faltered, the pain of what she already knew stabbing at her.

Neil caught her hand before it fell. The building burned behind him, the windows blown out and the cars crushed by the blast. The world was dark. Terrible things happened for no good reason.

That's why it had to change.

Stratos looked up at the sky with only a single glance at me. Slowly, he raised his other hand, reaching for the top of the pillar and the cities in the stars. In one of the colonies a family appeared. Then another. A couple. A business. A monument to the fallen. A home. A park. Thousands of hands and all their dreams. All filling the space Administrator and I created.

I looked back, seeing a sea of hands rise and reach. I knew many of them. Chris. Missy. Dean. Charlotte. Kati. Chevalier. Weld. Elle. Their hands were open, stretching. Hana reached out with Neil, their fingers clasping together. Dad didn't raise his hand. He didn't have to. Orga stood with Mikazuki, their fists closed as they set their eyes on it.

Many were afraid. They could sense her. Sense them. They knew something else was here and that it wasn't human.

Yet, as the flower bloomed and the petals spread wide over the moon, the fear wasn't one of dread but of the unknown.

But the future was always unknown. It was nothing but a blank canvas to be fil—

My heart froze.

I spun about, searching. The sensation was raw. Recoiling. The others who saw it—the ring, the colonies, and the dream—reacted differently. Lafter with awe. Veda with determination. Dinah with certainty. Orga with hope. They all saw it in their own ways but one rejected it outright.

I looked at Elle, but it wasn't her. Not Mouse Protector. Not Gregor. Not the EMTs. Not the bystanders on the street. Who? Who was that bit of cold disgust looking with no interest whatsoever in even thinking about it?

It was more than that.

This wasn't a simple rejection.

It was desperation. Desperation for an end. A finale. The antithesis to continuing and pushing forward. A desire to see it all...

No.

00 burst forward. The suit and I both tore apart, the one becoming many and accelerating through the world in an instant. 00 reformed, the golden light coalescing into two swords swinging down.

The red-eye snapped around and the suit jerked into motion.

He was going to kill them.

Leet knocked one blade aside with his suit's forearm and dodged to the side to avoid the other. My knee shot out, striking his chest and sending the suit tumbling back. People scrambled out of the way as the suit crashed into the street and began rolling.

He had to be stopped. The world was sick and genocide was his cure.

I materialized again, both feet planted as he fired thrusters to throw himself back to his feet. I thrust one blade forward and pulled the other apart to reform my Buster sword.

He was going to kill them all.

He had to die.