Why.

For a good few moments, my mind didn't manage anything more coherent than that single word. My blood felt like ice in my veins, still did when my power spoke.

"First things first," she said. "Annette was my mom, and I'm you. We're you. Being vague about that would just cause unnecessary drama later. You'll have to forgive Rider for leaving that call to me."

She shook off her hood, and despite the glum alley, I could tell she had the same black curls as Rider. The same black curls as mom, as me. She was me? Like from another earth? Pulled into this world by my power?

"I could unmask, or tell you things only you could know. Considering your power arguably created both my body and memories, I doubt you'd accept that as proof." She sighed. "It's not a problem if you don't believe me yet. I don't expect shortcuts to trust. Just keep it in mind as a possibility."

The possibility I considered more likely was that my power was delusional, but that wasn't important right now. "Alan Barnes. Why?"

"I persuaded him to take his family and move elsewhere." Like discussing the weather. "Divorce attorney in a dangerous city, he'll have made enemies. It won't lead back to us. I'm familiar with what the PRT would look for, and it shouldn't even come to that."

Nothing about her words reassured me. Emma's dad hated moving. He used to call it his lifestyle to live in the same house till the day he died. Had that day come? Or was I supposed to believe someone who called herself Assassin had bothered to persuade?

Except... I'd seen Emma at school yesterday, even caught a glimpse of her this morning. She'd looked annoyed if anything, not mournful. Even Emma would grieve for her dad, right?

"Is this about Emma? Revenge? I didn't—"

"No. It's about you. Emma is tangential." She paused, another one of those unfair silences, where I got to worry about my body language and she got to hide behind a mask. "Do you think every student in Winslow is completely indifferent to your misery?"

Where was she going with this? I wanted to say yes, because it was obvious, but it was also obvious that she expected that answer. "They're indifferent enough."

"Indifferent enough," she repeated. "Yeah, maybe. Humans are selfish. They're unfair. Petty. Short-sighted. But we're not so hopeless a species that there's absolutely no one who'd help. Who would reach out, if the risk was just a little lower. If Emma wasn't threatening them to leave you alone."

Emma had been doing what? My surprise wasn't because it was unbelievable. With Emma's social skill and standing, she could easily orchestrate my isolation. I just didn't believe that she needed to.

"In less than two weeks," my power continued, "Emma will be gone from the city. Sophia will go from popular thug to thug, and you can handle the others. After that, things will get better. It's not a storybook victory, where the system proves it functions and the bullies get what they deserve. It's not revenge either. But it's a step forward."

I felt a pang of longing at the picture she sketched. I could almost imagine it – attending school and not having to endure. Coming home and not having to rebuild my emotional strength just so I could get out of bed the next morning. But in what fucking world did things ever go that smoothly? It wasn't the one I lived in.

"It won't play out like that. Something will go wrong, and I'll be the one who has to deal with the consequences." I glared at the eyes behind those white lenses. "If you'd just asked, I'd have told you I didn't want... whatever it was you did." She had no right.

"A friend once told me what I wanted and what I needed were two different things." Her voice… I couldn't tell if it was fond or sad. A little of both. "I didn't take her advice then. Told her to cut it out or I'd cut her out of my life. You could do that to me now, remove me and never let me out again. I'll take that risk."

"Why?" I bit out, more demand than question. I wasn't sure what I was even asking. How could she be so self-assured about making decisions for me? Didn't she see the irony of my power robbing me of power, taking away what little control over my life I had?

"Because there's no point if I don't do things better." There was a heat in her words now. She stepped closer, close enough I had to look up to face her. "I'm going to say something obvious. Problems exist to be solved. Sometimes survival is all you can hope for, and sometimes victory comes at too high a cost, but improving your school life? Doable."

"I was getting by," I hissed, wanting to shout but too aware we couldn't draw attention. "I could've toughed it out till graduation, or started online classes next year. There was no fucking need."

"Sure. As a survival strategy, that works. As an escape plan, that works. But say you reach that finish line. What then? Are you going to rebuild your life, armed with nothing but memories of being isolated and betrayed? Your only emotional support a father you struggle to talk to because of the secrets you're keeping?"

Some of my rage drained away, gone to the same place as my words. I had no reply. Besides reaching a vague goal of getting out, of surviving until I could put school behind me, I hadn't given the future any thought. Barely had the energy to think past the next week nowadays. I'd sort of always assumed I'd go on to college, hadn't I? Once? Still?

"I'm not saying that's impossible," she said, her voice softer. "I'm sure there's people who could make a fresh start, leave behind their past completely. That's not us. So trust me. See how things go at school, see if the bullying lets up. If we're lucky, people will approach you for friendship again. If we're very lucky, you'll let them."

There was a lull in the conversation as I tried to articulate my thoughts, sort out feelings of doubt, outrage and maybe a spark of yearning. A distant police siren jarred me out of it. Unlikely as it was, I wondered if it was about me. That Emma's dad had called the Protectorate about being threatened or assaulted, and Armsmaster had used some kind of gadget to connect that to Taylor Hebert, coincidentally today. Was this senseless anxiety what I had to look forward to?

"They're chasing Rider's bug," Assassin said. Ah. So it was about me. Great. "Velocity already passed us. Dauntless will be flying over in a minute, and I expect others won't be far behind. We should move."

Casually, still leaning against the wall, she waved her stump at thin air. A pale gold hexagon lit up in mid-air, as tall as I was, quickly intensifying from gold-colored to actually gleaming like the metal. A forcefield? I expected a mirror, but what it reflected wasn't me. It wasn't even the alley behind it. Like a gold-tinted window in the world, it showed an unfamiliar rooftop, the ocean in the distance.

"After you," Assassin said, confirming a suspicion. A portal. She'd made a portal.

"No." The word left my mouth before I'd even thought it through. Not quite resistance for the sake of resistance. If I meekly obeyed here, I felt like I'd lose something. That I'd set a tone. "No. You can't just dictate where my life should go and expect me to be okay with it."

I glanced at the empty lot Rider had landed her bug in. I could walk out in the open, wave and shout and hope Dauntless noticed me as he flew by. Stupid, but it represented an option. It was something I could choose, even if it was a choice of which party I'd let decide my future.

I turned back to Assassin. "What you're doing, you're making my entire life like school." Surprise group work from the teachers. Ambushes from the bullies. Always anxious, wondering what would happen next, how that would affect me. "Constantly worrying that things outside my control might ruin my day. Except you're doing things that could ruin my life. Your 'help' is almost worse than what it might fix."

No reaction from Assassin. Not even an indication she was listening. Her portal wavered though. Flickered, the edges blurring.

"Rider wants to help but won't," I continued. "Caster resents me. You're working around me. And you're asking me to trust? How the fuck am I supposed to?"

The portal shattered into gold crumbs, fading quickly. Assassin raised her head, banging the back of it against the alley wall. And again, harder. "Fuck. I'm supposed to be better about this."

"I'm starting to think I'd rather have the heroes make decisions for me than my power." I still didn't want to join the Wards, or give myself to the PRT. But it seemed like my power wanted that even less, and... in a backwards kind of way, that made it leverage.

Assassin stayed silent. There was a sound in the wind that might've been Dauntless passing us by. Elsewhere, I imagined the heroes and the police and the PRT coming closer and closer, all with a fair chance of passing by this alley, spot us if they investigated the lot the bug had landed in.

"You know," Assassin said, "if you had any other power, I could imagine things turning out okay if you joined. The heroes aren't all good people, but most of them are, and I know some would have your back. But as long as you have us, I can't tell you that. If we let the PRT chain us, everyone loses. Caster wasn't lying when she said the heroes have to change."

Did they? Could they even? I wasn't sure. I admired the heroes, in the sense that they were inherently admirable, like firefighters, but I knew there was something wrong when a gang of superpowered Neo-Nazis was an accepted reality of life. When nothing seemed to be done about the stories you heard about the ABB, which likely had a larger kernel of truth than I was comfortable believing.

"Let me explain where we were coming from?" Assassin said. "I know words are next to worthless, but this is one of those situations where so many problems can be prevented with the simple truth. I'm not telling you to just accept everything I say, but maybe it'll help you frame the things you see?"

I cautiously nodded. Actions were louder than words, but I didn't lose anything by listening, and I'd always hated those prolonged sitcom misunderstandings that could resolved with an honest conversation. If she was going to lie, she'd need to coordinate it between four different people, and I might be able to catch them out.

"You said Caster resents you."

"If she doesn't, she was trying very hard to give me that impression."

Assassin nodded. "Something like that. Caster was drawn from a time our reputation was all we had. Introducing herself the way she did… it was her way of securing a little bit of control in a situation where she has less than ever." She wasn't looking in my direction, but it seemed she noticed my frown anyway. "Caster told you one thing, Rider told you another, and you chose to believe Caster. You gave her words more weight because of that first impression. Even those scraps of influence are precious to her, to us. Manipulation isn't the right word… or maybe it is the right word. I'll let you decide."

Like a slave without hope for freedom, grasping for the next best thing. Sway over her master. Whether it was manipulation or not, that entire image gave me the creeps.

"She'll be more agreeable when we start advancing our plans. It'll keep us busy, and I suspect she in particular might be able to develop a workaround to your power, given enough time." She muttered something under her breath. It didn't seem meant for me, and I wasn't sure I heard her correctly. Fucking tinkers?

But a workaround, a workaround sounded good. A solution? A way out? She could just be baiting me, but I didn't see why she'd make the lie so specific.

"As for Rider not helping, believe it or not, she's afraid." Afraid? "She reflects our early days, the brief moments of happiness allowed to exist because we lived a lie. Earlier, Rider told you she trusts us. She doesn't. She just trusts herself less, because Caster and I give her perspective on her failings. The path she started us out on. She knows she can't be allowed to make decisions this time."

"But… she seemed cheerful. Optimistic." Relatively speaking. In a way, it was reassuring to know she wasn't just inexplicably, miraculously okay. Hard to trust something I couldn't comprehend.

"She wanted to escape. She wanted to be a hero. Existing as your power fulfills those wishes, in a way she doesn't have to feel guilty for. I'm actually a little worried about how she's coping. Chains and anchors are very different things, and she discarded both. She could use something to keep her tethered." She looked at me, very deliberately. "Maybe a friend."

Me? I failed to suppress a bitter chuckle. "Isn't that a little pathetic? Befriending myself? Assuming you're actually me."

She shrugged. "Maybe. But I think we both know it'll take special circumstances before you let someone in again. Consider it a stepping stone."

Still set on that make new friends idea of hers, I could tell. I ignored that for now. The sirens were getting louder. "Okay. I'll try to understand that. And you? Why the hell scare me like that? Assassin, Alan Barnes?"

"I called myself Assassin because the name I'd choose is already taken." It took me a second, but I could guess which name that was. "I've had others, important because of what they stood for, but they're just names now. And as just names, the first never fit, the second I discarded, and the last is a bad memory. Your power's name for me is as good as any. I can make it work."

In what way could Assassin ever work as a name for anything but an assassin?

"And," she continued, "I admit I did want to startle you. I knew exactly how resistant you'd be to my involvement in your life. Your worst case scenario was probably me murdering my way through all your enemies. Isn't this better?"

No. Yes. Just as bad? Damn it, it was better, but I wasn't going to admit it.

"But as to what I am... I don't know. I've already demonstrated some. Selfish. Hypocritical. Arrogant. Hopefully a little less short-sighted than the others." She hung her head and sighed. Well. Points for self-awareness, even if it was after the fact. She pushed off from the alley wall, then turned to me. There was a weird delay between those motions, like she had to remind herself to look in my direction. "You said I was working around you, and you were right. I think, or maybe thought, that by not working around you, you'd resist. You'd be reckless. You'd do too little good to be worth the harm, and that you wouldn't see things that way."

Judging me before I even did anything to be judged. Because 'she was me', and obviously that made her an expert. "So you decided to improve my civilian life. So I'd be less unhappy staying Taylor the bullied schoolgirl."

"No." She shook her head. "I'm not deluded. Not in this. You'll inevitably join the fight, and we'll help you do it. That's your position in this relationship." A tug on our connection. An unkind, unnecessary reminder. "But you're right. I tried improving your situation before meeting you. Because I hoped – no, I hope you will find a balance. Spend time with dad. Make friends. Finish school. And if you want to be a hero, be one in moderation. Cape life is intense, violent, and lonely, and I've seen where that road leads."

I didn't understand – couldn't. Didn't have the necessary context. But the immense feeling communicated over our connection was clear enough. If it wasn't regret, it was something very close. And what she was saying… it sounded like a middle road. I couldn't help that my power didn't let me fight by myself, and neither could they, but they'd still let me contribute? They'd let me choose if I wanted to? That sounded like something I could maybe be okay with.

"Where that road leads." I turned the phrase over in my mind. "The fourth?"

"No. And yes." Assassin sighed. "I'll probably lose some trust for this, but some things, we can't afford to discuss. You'll be the first to know if that changes."

I didn't like that. At all. But... I suppose I knew what it was like to keep secrets because sharing them would only harm. Didn't feel good to be on the other side of that.

I stood in silence, thinking and listening to the sirens, half expecting Battery to appear in a white blur, or Armsmaster to drop down from the rooftop. Time to make a decision. I tried to recollect that perspective I'd felt when Rider took me flying.

"Tell me you'll be heroes."

"We'll do good. And when it isn't that simple, we'll help more than harm. Shitty definition of heroism, I know. And still harder than it sounds sometimes."

That did sound like a pretty shitty definition of heroism. But it sounded truthful. It sounded experienced. It sounded prepared. And if I was being honest, it sounded like a definition that could've been mine.

A gold portal unfolded before me. I hesitated, then took that first step forward. Doing as my power wanted, maybe, but a little more on my terms.