I'm finally back! Sorry about the delay, it was quite the busy week, but thanks for your patience! Anyway, I went back and added a few words and a handful of sentences to last chapter to make it flow better, and added a tiny bit of content to the last two paragraphs. Thanks for reading!

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"Why won't you do anything?!" I pleaded, throwing all the rage and impotence and hatred I was feeling into my phone. I watched through the blur of tears as the blue and red lights disappeared around a corner. I had seen them carting my father away as he tried to buck the restraints attaching him to his reinforced gurney and struggling against a PRT agent that would have fit into an offensive line. They had rolled him up into a vehicle whose design had borrowed strongly from both an armored car and an ambulance.

"Lily. Hey. I don't know what you expect me to do..." uncle Jason began. I didn't let him finish. I slammed my thumb into the large red icon to hang up the phone and just barely managed to restrain myself from throwing my phone against the wall in hatred. I wanted to scream. I wanted someone to shout at.

In the final moments before they had pushed him into his mobile cage, my father's eyes had caught mine. I was standing a short ways behind the string of gawkers. I had seen the shifts of emotions on his face: from anger and hopelessness sprang joy and excitement when he saw me. Then he had just enough time to take in my posture, my decision to be indecisive, and I had just enough time to see the betrayal and hurt wash over him before he was enshrouded by the vehicle he was to be taken away in.

As soon as the cars began to pull away and any hope of my interfering had been banished, it was as if a switch had flipped in my mind. My indecisiveness had worn off immediately as soon as there was no longer a decision to make. I had wanted to stop them. To get my father back. I even took a few steps toward the quickly retreating vehicles before crumpling with the knowledge that I would never catch them. So I had wrestled my phone from my pocket and called the only person who could maybe change things and undo what I had just done to myself. It was easier to hate him. Easier to scream at him. Afterall, I couldn't scream at myself.

The gawkers had turned to look at me. I hated them, at that moment. Any one of them could have interfered. They could have tried to stop it, but instead they just stood there, doing nothing. Watching as if it were a television drama instead of the life of a real girl that was standing right behind them. I had been worse than they. I turned to flee the way I had approached, not willing to bear their stares any longer.

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I didn't make it far before remembering the realities that had sent me home in the first place. Turning back after only a block, I decided to not embarrass myself and use the same front doors I had just left. I possessed a general access key to the apartment building that I could use from the meager parking garage attached to it. I had only had to use the key a handful of times, so in this instance I was glad that I had continued carrying it on my keychain.

The door from the garage opened immediately in front of the elevator, so I was able to ascend without being seen. I had to stop when I made it to the apartment door. There was police tape with "Simurgh Quarantine Area" printed everywhere on it. I would either have to army-crawl into my own apartment once I got the door open, or tear down the tape.

Looking up and down the hallway, I unlocked my door, then dropped to my knees, and finally to my belly. I crawled through my own doorway and moved up to a kneeling position to close it, attempting to be as quiet as possible. Standing, I turned around. The living room was completely trashed. I was unsure if it was due to the same reason the PRT ended up being called, or in a struggle when they had finally arrived. Probably both.

I made my way to the couch and collapsed onto it, exhausted both physically and mentally. Looking around the apartment from my chosen vantage point, I realized that this apartment, my safe haven since childhood, could never be my home again. It felt sullied by the things I had learned here. The dining room just to my left was ground zero for my misery.

The longer I sat and looked at it, the more uncomfortable with the space I became. I stared at the chair my father had been sitting in, the conversation playing back through my mind. The tape on the outside of the door was right. This was Her space now.

Struggling to my feet, I made my way through the hallway to my room. Before I fully realized what I was doing, I had thrown open my closet and had begun absorbing my entire wardrobe. I was moving out.

Absorbing every piece of clothing I had took surprisingly little time. It was mostly a matter of thrusting my hand into my closet or a dresser drawer and moving it laterally until I had (however briefly) touched each piece. I was finished in under a minute. From there I cleared out my jewelry box, then decided to bag the box, too. I didn't usually wear much makeup, but I had some. I bagged all of it, and while I was in the restroom I grabbed my toothbrush, toothpaste, my hairbrush, and all the toiletries I had, including soap and shampoo. On my way out of my bedroom, I stopped briefly to bag my meager stuffed animal collection.

With all that bagged, I went back to my door, intent on retreating from this place that I had once called home. With my hand on the doorknob I stopped. If I was leaving like this...I would have to take care of myself. I was on my own. If I just took a little more time, I could be more prepared. I could take much better care of myself. Removing my hand from the knob, I walked back to the hallway, stopping before I made it to my room outside the spare "bedroom" that we mostly used for storage.

I flung the boxes with all our winter gear open. Coats, scarves, gloves, and hats disappeared to my touch, even ones that didn't fit me. I tried my best to ignore the photo albums, although they tore at my heart every time I glanced at them. Finding Christmas supplies I bagged bells and ornaments, not even certain why but knowing that they could possibly be useful.

After grabbing most of the I wanted stuff from storage, I decided to raid the pantry next, figuring food would never be a bad idea. As I made my way back to the front of the apartment, I heard a voice outside the door. It sounded like a woman's voice. She must've been speaking on the phone, because I didn't hear anybody else. It stopped me dead in my tracks. The acoustics were such that I could clearly hear that she was talking, but it was very difficult to make out words. Slowly, I crept to the front door to make use of the peep-hole.

As I approached the door, her words became slightly easier to discern. Placing a hand on either side of the door, I looked out into the hallway in front of my room. Far off to the right side of my field of view I could just make out a woman talking on a phone, her side to the door as if she was looking in the direction of the elevators.

"...that there was no overlap time. I should have been here before you guys left." She berated the person on the other end before stopping to listen. She seemed fit, almost like a personal trainer more than somebody that just uses their body's muscles a lot. She had a ballcap on with a ponytail coming out the hole in the back, and I couldn't see the insignia on her clothes from this angle, but by now I was certain she was PRT.

I hadn't realized it before, but them taking away my father had left a bad taste in my mouth. The idea of going with the PRT and...what? Being an orphan? They would probably force some unlucky agent to take me in just so that they could have another member in their precious Wards team. The system had failed me. I couldn't believe that just earlier today I had wanted to become part of it.

Was this the touch of the Simurgh?

"Well that's just great Misha. One of these days that'll bite you in the ass." She responded to the person on the other line, snapping me out of my ruminating and focusing me on a new problem. I was stuck.

My nerves were already frayed. I had taken the extra time to prepare myself, but I was aching to leave the echoes of the horrible memories my former home brought. But now I couldn't leave.

"Well, I'll be here when he does. Have him bring me something to eat, I haven't had anything since that salad."

Crap crap crap. Okay, I just had to figure out a way to leave. Maybe I...

"Naa, I don't care. As long as it's not that fried stuff he tried to get me to eat last time."

Well, okay it looked like her conversation was ending. Was she going to come in after that, or stay out in the hallway?

"Okay, see ya...Bye." She finished, hanging up her phone and slipping it into her left pocket. She looked up and down the hallway before visibly sighing and leaning against the wall, immediately retrieving her phone from the same pocket she had just stuffed it into.

Okay good, at least she wasn't coming in. I crept away from the door, mindful to try to keep the floor from creaking. On thinking a moment, I bagged my socks to get my feet in contact with my shoes. Then, lifting one foot up, I made the shoe disappear and the sock reappear on it, and the repeated then same procedure for the other foot. Finally I treaded softly to the pantry, trying to ignore the spot at the kitchen table that my world had collapsed.

Cracking it open, it was the work of moments to absorb everything from the four shelves into my grab-bag. I decided I would take the tools we had as well, even though they would just be redundant copies. Who knows, maybe I would need two pliers for something. I made a quick pit-stop into the kitchen to bag a few more kitchen knives, as well as some pots, pans, cups, plates, bowls, and a handful of utensils. And a can-opener. All this canned food would be pretty worthless without a can-opener.

Now what? I soft-footed it back to the peep-hole. Yep, she was still out there. Messing around on her phone. After a few moments of indecision, I had another idea. I crept back into the hallway and grabbed our spare blankets and sheets, and a few clean towels. Then, I walked back into my bedroom, absentmindedly tapping my pillow to bag it. I had never successfully bagged something as large as a mattress, so I was a little leery of the headache that had accompanied my attempts to overexert my power with an entire vehicle. With a hand on the mattress, I felt fairly confident I could do it.

With barely a thought the mattress disappeared. I released a breath I hadn't realized I was holding. It felt ridiculous. I had dealt with things infinitely worse than a headache today...but at least I could theoretically control whether or not I gave myself a headache, I guess. I quickly bagged the box springs and the bedframe as well.

Stalking back toward the front of the apartment I could feel anxiety building. I had finished anything and everything I might want to do in this apartment and I wanted out. I was no closer to being able to leave than when Mrs. PRT Agent had arrived. Even worse, by the sound of it this apartment might be on permanent watch from now on. If I had to stay in here all night...I couldn't. I couldn't stay in here all night. Already I could feel my heart rate increasing and my breaths becoming short and fast.

Her phone rang. It was some stupid pop song that she was about fifteen years off from the target audience.

"Reaves." She answered.

I waited with baited breath. Was this my chance?

"What?!" She exlaimed, turning to look at me. I shied away before realizing she almost certainly couldn't see me. No, she was just looking at the door. "How could she already be here?"

Of course. Somehow they knew I was here. She had been waiting for me, and now she knew I was here.

"Okay, well go get the manager to get me a key for this apartment. She might be in there already."

Oh no. Not only did I have to get out of here for my own sanity, now I had to do it immediately or be hauled in either for Simurgh quarantine procedures, or be put up for adoption. Maybe both.

Our lovely agent Reaves knocked on the door. "Lily? Are you there?"