In the years that followed, John often wondered how Cara had managed to stay unnoticed even for one day. When he saw her for the first time, he wouldn't have needed the dustbin floating towards him, nor her voice yelling at him in his mind to know that she was no human; that she was far more powerful, far more intense, far more real than anyone else he'd ever known.
When John had been younger, Jedikiah had held the same enigmatic attraction, but what had drawn the boy to his savior and destroyer was something entirely different to the energy that radiated out from the woman standing in front of him now. For one short moment John realized, she is what ULTRA fears, then he was blasted off his feet.

"Wait! I…" I don't want to hurt you. But why should she believe him?
-You couldn't even if you wanted.
John grinned involuntarily. Sure?
She almost smirked. Try if you dare.
He did, allured by the playfulness of her words. It had been too long since he'd been like that, teasing, competing – talking to someone who didn't expect him to do anything great.
Someone who didn't know, and didn't care, what he had done.

John stood up and teleported himself behind the stranger. "Hey, prett-" The rest of the sentence was cut off by a blow to his stomach that didn't actually hurt but caught him by surprise. She was quick to get from showing off to attacking people.
Such things didn't happen without reason. In the blink of an eye John teleported back to where he'd been first, hands held up. Alright, I get it. What happened to you?
-Do you think I don't know you can do better? Don't play nice with me, I don't need you to.
"You sure don't." John tried to catch her glance but her eyes were constantly moving, constantly alert. "How much do you know about those hunting you?"
"How much do I know?" She shook her head, frowning. "Everyone's hunting me. Including you, I guess, for reasons I don't care."
"I'm not hunting you." She didn't react to his words, so John repeated them silently. I'm not hunting you. I'm trying to help you.
-I don't want you to! She screamed at him so forcefully that her voice filled his whole head, blocking out the street, the noises around.

A boy and a girl, gesturing wildly. She smiles. He tears at her clothes. She cries. He tears harder. She shoves him. The world explodes. A man closing a door, from above a little girl is crying. Darkness. Rats.

"Get out!" The woman's voice broke the spell her own thoughts had cast upon John. She stood close to him now, shaking. "What did you do?"
He shook his head. "Was that your father? Did he throw you out?"
"Don't pretend to understand." Her voice was lower but not less powerful, as regret fueled the rage within her. John knew that feeling all too well.
"I deserve what he did to me. Maybe not then, but now… I understand. He was doing the right thing, he was protecting his family."
"Aren't you his family, too?" Not that he knew himself, anyway. Maybe their kind wasn't made to have happy childhood memories.
The thought suddenly started to nag at him. Why weren't they allowed such things? The young woman didn't seem to have chosen her fate, no more than him. She was innocent.

"Hey! You're okay? Scared I'm gonna kill you, like I did with that guy?"
He shook his head. "It was an accident. You didn't want to."
"But I did, anyway. He is dead, and my life is a mess now. How do you want to help me? Can you undone all this? Can you undo me?"
John looked at her sharply. "That is not what you want." Her words were still resonating in him, softer but going deep, reaching down to where they were true for John as well: I didn't want to kill Roger, but I did, anyway. He is dead, and my life is a mess now.

"Well…maybe." She seemed somewhat caught off guard by that. "But then I really don't see how you can help me. Especially if you say that the world's not after me at all, so…"
"Not the whole world." Johnsighed. "But there are people hunting us. Some humans, and some like us."

"I'm not afraid." The woman spoke clear but low, the careful way her lips parted proving she hadn't spoken a lot recently. "I've been dealing with worse."
"Worse than being tortured? Worse than being stripped of everything you thought to know about yourself?"
For the first time, she backed away, only one step but it was enough. "They can't do anything to me that hasn't already been done." She closed her eyes for a moment and then opened them again, her fingers dancing through the air, preparing to send him flying away again. "If they want me, they're gonna pay for it."
"And what are you paying for by letting yourself get caught?" John didn't wait for an answer. He grabbed the woman's arm and teleported her to safety.

John had planned to save Cara, but it quickly turned out that she was the one saving him. She was headstrong enough for both of them when it came to go out and fight, and while she was the cleverest person he'd ever met outside ULTRA, there were things she simply didn't question. She didn't doubt her right to live, her right to get food and clothing whenever she wanted. Her right to have something John could hardly remember experiencing: fun.
And after a few months, though it would take years for any of them to admit it, love.

Save them.
John shook his head, trying to block out the voice within as he pretended to listen to Russell. The guy was crazy, and hiding away even more than Cara, but somehow in the past year, he had become John's best friend. And a constant reminder of the responsibility Roger had imposed on him: Russell was a child at heart, he reminded John of his little foster brothers. So trusting in a world that had almost broken him. It had taken a while for John to realize it, and even more to accept it: He had to fulfil Roger's last wish. His order. Not because of Roger himself, not to atone for killing him – he would never be purged of that sin.
Because of Russell. Because of people like him, of people who still saw beauty when they looked at the world, promise, brightness… things John only saw in him. And Cara. And Astrid – he checked up on her from time to time, teleported uptown and walked to her house, just close enough to hear her voice in his head. Astrid still dreamed of him sometimes, or of the man she imagined him to be. A hero.
John smiled as he turned away and walked towards the lair's entrance. This girl, too, was special. What little he grasped from her mind, she seemed to be just as headstrong as Cara.
But he was no hero, because this world was not meant for them.

Save them.
Kill or be killed.
He would.