Near Light

by novalounge

This is a sequel to 'One Way Trip', so read that first. If 'Life is Strange' was their origin story, 'One Way Trip' was a re-awakening. An introduction to new friends, hidden enemies. Warnings for the future. Early power-ups for what lies ahead. 'Near Light' is the continued adventure of Max & Chloe, picking up where 'One Way Trip' left off. Pricefield, etc.

22. Focal planes

Max out-of-focused on the horizon line. Or where it might have been. Found it to be just as lost, beyond the descending rooftops, blending into the diffuse bank of clouds lurking above the pale grey water of the Sound. Her legs folded beneath her as she rocked forward, elbows planted unsteadily atop her knees.

Maybe it was a continuation of comfort-seeking regressions that the weathered bench at the edge of her parent's Seattle home became her default autopilot destination on leaving Alex's Harlem brownstone. It was certainly less complicated than its twin, overlooking a different bay far to the south. Retained a more innocent shade of guilt, perhaps.

Least it's warmer than the one in Central Park. Brrr.

She'd exited the New York flat moments before with a surprising new wrinkle and troubling implications. Air-quote coincidentally stuck smack in the middle of their current global reputation situation, and Juliet's off-campus attack, apparent rescue, and subsequent disappearance.

Attention too far inward, her right elbow slid forward off her knee.

She caught herself, replanted.

Man. This…bugs. What is it?!

What does it mean?

The hell could it have to do with any of this?

An unseen, possibly central puzzle piece that no one on their side seemed to have been aware of. A simple thumb-drive, one of theirs, apparently. Given to Juliet by an MCCP insider on the day of their interview together. Passed right-the-frak under all of their noses.

Correction…at least one person was aware.

According to Alex, who'd taken her brief turn at accessing the drive before returning it to Juliet unopened, entry to the physical hardware itself appeared encrypted, with hints that it carried an unknown date or condition when it might unlock on its own. Which naturally piled up all kinds of questions.

For when?

By whom?

Why?!

Max balled her fists. The timing of it all; that day at MCCP with Juliet in her reporter hat - and then everything that followed - in all branches - it's too much of a coincidence to be nothing. Right? Unless it is. But if it's something, how much of what is is it?

A few lonely sea birds glided overhead, calling out to each other. Brighter shades of grey, winging toward the Sound.

Max's eyelashes crossed again at the fuzzy horizon below, dropped her brain into an inward focus. She stilled herself; imagined the bench as a ground-wire for pent-up tension, allowing her fidget-energy dissipate.

In her moment of quiet, she felt the mass of the earth pulling her firmly, a gentle wash of chilly air caressing her cheek, melted frost from the bench soaking uncomfortably into her butt. Alongside early signs of neighbors going about their morning routines, and the intermittent wingbeats of a small sparrow, flitting between branches overhead.

Mmmph.

This—

She stretched out her neck and shoulders. Constrained movements.

…this is prolly one for Chloe and Soph to run with, tbh. Yup. They'd make for the quickest investigation. Although Chloe wouldn't finish with her morning shows for a while yet, and Soph was probably still under the weather. And Max was still on the bench. Literally, if not also entirely metaphorically.

Do we have an emergency or not?

Either way. Blindsided again. Although…to be fair, I guess this is how most ordinary people live the rush of an unknown future.

If it was important, why didn't any of us see it coming? None of our prognosticators, none of our telepaths, none of our tech teams - hell, even 'I see all the data things' Chloe missed it. And fickle ole' FutureMe obviously can't be bothered to drop us a note. What good am I, anyway? Right? Ha!

Unless I tried.

Maybe it's another version of noping out of the meetup with Juliet. What if I interfered, but dropping a hint led to some other kind of awful? Some road untaken. Or? Different way to get to the same lousy branch we were on before?

Yeah, but that hand-wave to analysis paralysis can't be my new default assumption for everything, can it? The big loops remain in play for a reason. But I still have to work down here.

Okay…but…going back to the last timeline alteration snafu - without Juliet's interview, what happened to the drive in that branch?! Did something on it propel the shitshow over there without us knowing it? Or did it stay in-house, since Jules never made it onsite?

Or was it like that damned cube squirreled away by some future Chloe for her earlier self at S-6? Info held back 'til the moment and timeline we discovered it because spoilers? Not like there's much of that going around already.

Complicated.

And…we might never know.

Or…maybe…maybe the damn thing just doesn't matter. A big fat nothing-kebab.

(Mmmm. Kebab. Crap. Now I'm hungry.)

Maybe it's nothing after all - handed off to Juliet with intentions, but the 'whatever' on it didn't ultimately affect events with the way this timeline rolled out? Was it meaningful for an earlier timeline that got looped away? Or is it meant for one yet to arrive? Or…wait…is the drive the reason they were after Juliet?! Did the bad-guys know something or see an opportunity? Or…are they in the dark about this too?

Ugh.

Doesn't sound like Alex or Jules were able to access anything on it, so…which would probably stay true in any direct timeline variants as well? Herring? Too much going on already. Is it a herring? Please let it be a herring. Herring. Herring. Herring-herring-herring. Heh. Okay, that's a little fun to say.

Her brow re-furrowed as she released a tiny Chloe-like growl into the fresh air.

Okay, but seriously, WTH?

Cycling.

She shook her shoulders to exit her loop, forced herself out with a bit of mental tai chi.

Been a while since I've practiced. I'm holding stress again. Right…here. Max rubbed just below her belly. Need to find time soon. Or…make time.

I think recent experiences have also brought home how incredibly important it is for me to acquire a pink bear hoodie onesie. So…there's that critical task, too—and kebab.

Whatever. I'd say the drive thingie is only a distraction, but one of our people took the time and risk to do whatever it took to go super-ultra-stealth mode in front of the most observant crowd on earth, load whatever or whatever, and then hand it over to Juliet. Successfully. That's…disappointing by itself. And worth getting to the bottom of, even if it is a herring.

Unless.

I'm missing something.

Come on. This isn't checkers. Think…chess. Or go. Or 3-d go, even! Everyone's cleared to the n'th. There's no reason for any of our folks to blow any whistles, or work against us or our missions - so it's gotta be something else. But…what?

And…Juliet. Juliet was there to work on her story…the meeting was on my calendar, which narrows things maybe. Who knew? Who had access? And what were they trying to accomplish?

Alex made it sound like Jules was surprised to get the drive when she was out to see us, which leaves what? She wasn't expecting it, duh. Which means what? Uh…yeah…dunno.

Sigh.

We need to find out who did it, at least. Then we'll find out what's on the drive, why this mystery person gave it to Juliet, and maybe, if we're lucky, get a clue about where she's hiding now so we can help? Somebody was in touch with her to help her that day, right? Is it one of us? Same person? Or…? That's making more sense, maybe?

But…crap. Only guessing.

Not enough to figure this out on my own from here.

Chloe.

Soph.

Check.

Decided for the moment, she hopped from the bench, spun around by some half-forgotten rote to head into the now-empty house. Halted. It was still her parents' place. Under MCCP watch. But bouncing them randomly around the planet as she had, they hadn't warmed the house with their presence in many months. Lights were on, but—

Ah well. I guess…bye anyway, The House.

Mind otherwise astir, she offered a half-felt wave in the direction of her second childhood home. A melted butt-print on the bench and dead-end footprints on the frosty-dewy lawn were all that remained to prove she'd been there at all.

---

Chloe skimmed through early petabytes surfaced by her IAs to the outer edges of the Core, while the external dossiers on her live-broadcast-ambush-squad continued to grow on their own.

Interesting choices. Could try to be a little less obvious, guys.

The Core's persistent, tendril-fed cache of the internet spun worlds faster than the live network but wasn't always updated to the second. Nor did it include every possible non-public source.

Waiting…

Milliseconds passed. Six-dimensional data abstractions gathered, flared, visible through an inherited symbolic language internal to Chloe. One she nearly felt she understood. Until she concentrated too hard on the colors, and all meaning slipped away. She mentally drummed her fingers as facets of her mind wandered off in other directions.

One tradeoff in halting self-modification where she had; the local Core was something she had to access, remain linked to, rather than 'be.' A storage and processing extension she and others could use or farm things out to - but not a permanent, integrated, thinking and aware dependency of her enhanced consciousness. A minor point of difference that fed her standard worry - might not be 'her' consciousness at the point she embraced the changes necessary to open that frontier. This was why the inconvenience she sometimes felt 'waiting at the boundary' was far outweighed by the comfort of separation - and all it implied about who she remained.

But…the day before, when Max tossed her the rewind-cube she'd moon-bounced backward and forward again from her recent other-branch-adventures-in-suck, Chloe absorbed more than endless layers of loop-data about what happened. She took in the memory-save-points iterative versions of herself burned for personal operational continuity between their countless branch-clear rewind attempts.

In addition to the facts, the plans, the emotional devastations, she'd felt time-split versions of herself wrestling hard with the same old thoughts, worries, and doubts. Enlightening and disturbing, in an infinity-mirror sort of way. Included was strong consideration of shunting aside her fears, letting go of her 'self,' and allowing whatever emerged to possibly reach some higher potential. And maybe, just maybe, whatever it became could help the others find an edge or a way to win over there - even if the watcher, the driver inside her head, might be gone, replaced.

She suspected it would be more than capable. But odds were good that it would see no reason to send winning plans back for a final loop, returning prior-Chloe's existence, and erasing its newly evolved self from reality in the process. Even so.

It wouldn't be suicide to take that path, she'd sometimes reasoned. Risk, for sure. Sacrifice, maybe. After all, she didn't know for sure if her ego, her continuity of self-consciousness, would be lost. But…it always felt close enough to giving up, which gave her pause in those early loops when the burdens of that continuity momentarily overwhelmed her ability to carry on.

However, that selfless, selfish line of thinking diminished across the months of EXP-grinding virtual loop-time. When contrasted with the real human horror-show everyone was forced to cycle through, she began to view her periodic bouts of doubt and self-pity with higher levels of awareness and disgust.

Because even as limited, as human as she was, she could still do more than all but one.

Those save points, those feelings, came to her as something other than direct experience, just as the original lifetime-dump from OtherChloe had. Marked. Somewhere between, anyway. But they didn't suddenly make her a different person than she was before taking possession. Even so, as close as these were to her current self, the truths, their contributions to her 'soul,' for lack of a better term, were inescapably self-evident and applicable.

In the end, she knew her closest personal self could handle even such extreme circumstances without making that internal evolutionary jump forward - because she'd done it. It wasn't faith in herself or abstract mirrors of herself - it was proof. The difference, while circular, mattered when it came to acceptance of the lessons of forwarded loop-experience.

Even now, in this timeline reset to relative calm, it was impossible to deny what she saw, knew, of her performance under those impossible pressures. In a sense, the weighty demands and stakes of those long, endless retries made for yet another terrible sort of crucible.

One distillation of which was the reduction in personal pressure offered by a simple proof - that she was enough as she was. As Chloe v.1.5.

Least when it comes to dealing with our earthly challenges.

One step at a time there, Hoss. Distracted, she smiled at the memory of an oft-repeated but long-forgotten grandpa ref.

Aaand speaking of earthly challenges—

Another fragment of her awareness responded to something external pulsing for her attention. One of her IAs flagged a semi-random bit of surprisingly relevant information she hadn't been looking for. She found herself smirking.

Even if they weren't truly one, her agents and the Core did sometimes seem to operate as though they anticipated needs she hadn't yet realized.

Arming her for the media confrontation ahead.

Suckers.

I know kung-fu.

Her inner voice responded, Then show me.

She reduced her relative slowdown to increase throughput from the external non-Core systems. Little point drawing out the loneliness of super-super-slow-mo when the bits barely trickled through the bottlenecks anyway.

She waited what seemed like hours for each syllable of the host's introductions to rumble over her awareness while pouring over a far deeper pool of insight on the assembled guests in her inner space. Broke through to the network's hastily prepared hostile-video files staged on the control center's servers, ready to launch at critical inflection points of their planned segment.

Strat's way too obvious, kids. Panel curation alone outlines your reactive counter-agenda. I'd expect more nuance, but you're moving fast this morning.

Throw a bunch of serious, grown-ass dudes at us, stacking the deck; never mind those chopped up media clips. Roadmap tears at our level of experience and our cred, throws shade on my self-report of Alena's free will, and they're gonna have to undermine our fusion launches somehow. They can't just up and call it a hoax when we might have working tech in the field, so they need something else to buy time or delay things, bury us in red tape. Maybe enough to flip partner execs from inside to say it's trash tech, or pile a bunch of government and legal bullshit on us to outright ban things? If they get their way, our obituary's gonna read like an elaborate hoax, a dangerous scientific overreach, or some kind of financial scam. Or all the above, if they can make it stick.

Whatevs. Not like the fuckers will get their way or anything.

She was certain they'd drafted tons of scenarios over the years, but supposed this was the only set of cards they could rightly play on such short notice.

The network anchor, Dale Murran, finally sealed his lips around the final resonance of his intro. He had a face like an investigative network anchor, Chloe mused with a laugh.

Alright, Miss Good-Enough. Showtime. That's their play - so what's our best strategic response? What should we do here? For reals? Take a deep breath, set aside all that bein' pissed off at the bad guys miles sideways for a sec, and let's run this shiznit past the end.

Across her inner-spaces, predictive branch-diagrams grew, overwrote themselves at blinding speed, playing out thousands of straightforward simulations. She wasn't trying to predict the future; that would only work at narrowing broad probabilities two to three questions or interactions ahead, given variables. For present purposes, she didn't require perfect or complete inputs.

Okay. Trends vs. goals coalesce to three potential critical paths.

One, I follow Jillian's coaching - keep control, work the transitions, redirect them, and stay on-message. But that's gonna break down under the hardcore badgering that comes with this kind of panel setup, which may leave us looking too clever or evasive - like a slippy asshole politician who won't give a straight answer. People might take away a handful of new memes, but in the end, it's a fast-track to a wishy-washy draw.

I can do better.

Route two. Go off-script, remix their Q&A live to land us a stronger position, while dialing up emotional reactions to stimulate defensive sympathies among the self-knighted belligerati out there. Not the worst plan, but not sure I wanna play circumstantial gang-bully victim either. Everyone on our side deserves a stronger showing than that.

Which leaves…route three.

Fuck responding to their agenda.

One and two are the same flavor. Jillian would be happy, and we could let whichever one stand in the final timeline without too much carnage.

Third route gets a little more unpredictable and real-time remixy…could go full-spec aggro-recon - which means we're heading for a cube-swap and Maxi-licious-timeline-reboot to a canceled third interview. No damage to the permanent record, and maybe we learn some shit we can use. And…I'll feel a metric ass-ton better after handing a few of these guys their uppance. Even if it's temporary.

Or…yeah.

Or.

Third route / hard mode.

Cause…why not?

No reset.

Why no reset modifier?

Cause we're better than these assholes.

Okay. Well?

What's it gonna be?

Proxy-payback aside, what's best for us? For everyone who isn't a globe-trotting-asshat?

Come on, girl. Say it.

Commit and prune the trees.

Yeah. K…okay. Fine.

Her inner reflection responded in an authoritative, reverb-y voice that almost passed for wisdom by itself.

First principals: whenever possible, favor driving your own agenda rather than reacting to those of your adversaries.

Second: behave predictably to appear less threatening.

Third: act unpredictably to unbalance your adversaries and press your advantages.

Fourth: deliver overwhelming force though hidden, subtle movements to mask the targets, timing, and means of your inevitable and decisive victory.

'Fifth - and most important: have fun!'

Yeah…knew I was gonna say that.

Cause, you know, I'm all smart and shit.

And someone nearly as smart said these same things a long, long time ago.

'Cept for that last one, of course; cause…anime-binge night with Max.

Okay - well, it was worth this round-trip to make sure, since sans reset, I'll only get one shot at this.

First-wave of her recon done, blink check on her route instincts test-validated, most of Chloe broke through the surface to real-time…

…to meet stifling air. A wobble. A dark box. A red dot above an unblinking eye, surrounded by a wall of too-bright lights. She re-evaluated the physical setup, so intentionally designed to cause on-camera discomfort, it was laughable.

The overflow room they put her in had more in common with a voice booth than a proper remote studio. The lights were old incandescents, closer and brighter than they'd been elsewhere, and staffers shunted the room's air conditioning away as soon as she hit the lobby. Even the chair they gave her was a janky swiveler that couldn't help but place any normal person off-balance for the duration. No offer of makeup to forestall the heat-shine that often appeared on camera as evidence of nervousness or dishonesty.

Cheap tactics, but not like any of that could affect her.

Chloe balanced herself, extended her inputs. Blinked inner eyes again on Jillian's HQ conference room, the secondary ops floor managing other aspects of the morning's related investigations, the local affiliate control center, and the remote network studio in NYC. As well as each of the remote sites or offices broadcasting the network's hastily assembled panel of experts. Most of whom were legit experts, which posed a slight problem.

Or maybe…maybe a different kind of solution? Hmm.

Yeah. You know…fuck it.

That could work.

'Nightmare mode' it is…

Fractions of an instant had passed since she returned to 1:1 time. Sound ramped up like a cassette tape with a slow start.

Jillian's voice continued from a mid-sentence cutoff, launched somewhere after Chloe first accelerated, "…loe, I'm sorry about this - I was sure we'd make it all the way through. My producer contact…calls aren't going through. You're on-screen already, so it's too late to back out gracefully, but…"

Chloe interrupted with her inside voice. "Whatever. I'm here. Let's use the opportunity. Can always get Max to reboot to right after #2 if this goes wrong," she lied. Nothing like a little soul-crushing pressure to force an excellent show, right?

Jillian relaxed, nodding. No doubt confident that the first two interviews Chloe nailed were enough for one day. Meaning what happened from then on was an exploratory fork entirely at Chloe's discretion.

One of Jillian's team raised her hand awkwardly. "You…you aren't going for the full-Renegade play-through this time, are you?"

Chloe laughed, amused that one of Jillian's chirpy, hyper-polished minions might get the ref, much less have the courage to make it. Only after raising her hand, of course, which made it somehow exactly perfect. Chloe's reply carried a playful grin. "I'm a motherfuckin' rock star, baby."

For whatever reason, that brief exchange made her even more confident of her route.

---

Juliet adjusted the telescoping silver antennas from her perch at the edge of the coffee table. Just when she thought she had it, she'd let go, and the blocky digital artifacting would jumble up and refreeze the whole screen. It was impossible to get the picture right when direct contact made her a part of the receiving antenna.

There's a metaphor buried in here somewhere.

After a few more seconds futzing around with the stupid metal sticks, the new station Ian directed her to mostly emerged from the cubic melt.

The coffee she'd put on earlier filled the small house with its aromatics, but she hadn't peeled herself from the screen long enough to pour a cup. Not that she'd noticed.

She'd only caught from Chloe's second interview forward, but that was enough to jolt her from her cold isolation. Transfixed. Breath held. Brain working furiously, if…inefficiently. She was only vaguely aware that the table's edge had put her leg to pins and needles as she watched a world event unfold before her eyes.

She glanced at her burner phone again, where the whole of the internet was on fire from the earlier broadcasts. Skimming global reactions delivered the first hint of the scale, the sheer enormity of what Juliet had arguably if unintentionally set in motion with her fateful visit to Las Vegas.

Ember, the resident orange cat, couldn't have cared less about anything outside, content to curl around her feet, tail swishing lazily. But for Juliet, the explosive pace of motion and emotion around the world drew a stark contrast to the soundless, insulated solitude she'd been cocooned in since her 'incident.'

Left her with a sense of dislocation.

Seeing Chloe again furthered that feeling in another direction.

She's…magnetic. She had a gruff sort of wounded charisma before, but - she's hardly the same.

As a social person, Juliet had always paid close attention to subtleties of how people chose to communicate. And as a reporter-in-training, she'd gotten better at picking hidden meaning from the subtext of word choice, body language, intonation - what they said, but also what people left out. It was through those lenses she evaluated Chloe's performance. While conscious of the concluding bias inherent in her choice and assignment of the term 'performance.'

Never-mind Chloe's professional, chill persona; it was her effortless elegance in delivery, her confidence, the commanding flow of the words she unleashed that together enforced an impression of intellect and poise far beyond recollection - or Chloe's natural years. The contrast between the person she remembered and the Chloe on screen was too much to reconcile. Juliet felt a distinct wave of deja vu.

First time she'd seen her in years, but…she is - she's…just like Max now, isn't she? They're…both different like this…together, then?

Another contrast carried through in Chloe's enthusiasm. It was in her eyes, in her voice, in the corners of her lips. 'Enthusiasm' was an element absent in Juliet's recollections of Chloe.

She snapped back to the crux of discomfort she'd grappled with since her meeting with Max. That buzzy feeling she was missing something desperately crucial in the gap.

On reflection, the girls she'd known, however incompletely, made for unlikely optimists; Max with her quiet sarcasm, Chloe with all her dark…complications. Never in a million years would either have built anything grander than an alt coffee shop somewhere in the Pacific Northwest. Yet, on the heels of the Arcadia disaster, they left together, and within months set to task in the Nevada desert. Driven to a higher purpose, sharing an uncanny sophistication of thought and perspective on the nature of the world and its direction down the long road ahead.

And for that much, perhaps it was like Max said; maybe Arcadia had been a catalyst for them to want to do something different. But that's where her argument fell apart for Juliet - a catalyst for feelings, she could understand. But surviving a disaster couldn't confer new capabilities. It might give rise to new ambitions but couldn't lead to new talents. Or knowledge. Or skills. Or judgement.

That gap between Arcadia and MCCP measured only a few months. Such a short distance between the end of Juliet's world and the rise of theirs.

What was it?

What brought out this side of them?

What did they go through to get here?

What…happened?

And when did they have the time?

What's driving them to the point of everything they've carried out?

And how did they become so adept at adulting their way through all of this?

How…how did they become so good at doing?

That's the billion-dollar question, right there.

Juliet absently toyed with the phone in her hand, conflicted, if no closer to understanding.

Then…then there was the content of Chloe's speech.

Juliet wasn't a scientist, but most fact-sensitive people were aware of the problems legacy energy consumption brought to the world - and she'd learned enough about fusion in the run-up to her meeting with Max to understand, in layman's terms, why solving it might be such a huge deal. If leaving her no closer to figuring out why these two had anything to do with it. She understood that the implications for the future were mostly mind-boggling, world-changing - science fiction even - going back to the kind of vision Max shared in their original Vegas interview.

But Max didn't say anything about the people in their company making this kind of massive breakthrough already…did she?

She tried to remember, but their meeting felt like half a lifetime ago.

Being outside felt as far away.

She unconsciously glanced toward the window, then the door. Eyes back to the screen.

She regretted not being as sharp in the moment as she remembered herself to be. Hadn't had a chance to go over the recordings or her notes since the Journal sidelined her. Or much of anything since she'd had to ditch her phone en route to her hiding spot on Governor's Island.

But Max was talking about trying to end world hunger, and people eventually leaving the planet and…but if this is real now - does it make all of that real too?!

What…wha…honestly…it makes even less sense if that's true?

Who are you, and what have you done with Chloe and Max?!

She was only half kidding, despite the misgivings scratching at the back of her mind.

In the end, it wasn't a bad thing they were doing, but…

Why them, of course?

But what does any of it have to do with me?

Why am I here?

Who's…really after me?

Why?!

Why me?

Unresolved frustration and too many conflicting inputs slammed around her brain, missing.

What the hell is going on here?!

Chloe was back on screen. Something, maybe more mischief in her eyes, broke Juliet from her spiraling inner dialog.

Chloe retreated to one small square among eight.

Panel…ah. Cross-examination time?

Juliet put her deliberations on hold, focused intently on the mostly tuned screen in front of her.

With new puzzle pieces for the mystery, new sensory input to break the monotony, Juliet felt the beginnings of a new fire in her belly. Like someone finally dropping the beat after an interminable pause.

---

Chloe, still decked in her faded NASA t-shirt and blue men's suit coat, smiled through the first round of pleasantries.

At once, they were to business.

"Thank you all for tuning in, and thanks to our guests for joining us," said Dale Murran, the network's rising hotshot investigative reporter. He smacked a stack of papers against his desktop to align them.

A rear, high-angle studio security camera showed the pages to be blank.

"Ms. Price, you've had a busy morning. Any reaction to the current state of our markets and the negative impacts your earlier statements are having on a lot of everyday investors out there?"

Fast, open-ended tactical softball. Chloe expected something a bit more direct, but this wasn't so out of the blue. One response-path would trap her into accepting the association of responsibility for people's losses. Crafty setup. The other was hers to forge.

Of course, she was aware of the upheaval in far more minute detail than any single investor or pundit but resisted the draw-in. The network's audience was only partially her audience.

She allowed her 'Inner Muse for Idiots' to guide her way. Mostly to amuse herself. Pun intended.

Human nature is human nature, and the fundamentals of persuasion aren't rocket surgery. Don't open with how wrong they are - establish shared ground, then begin your journey together.

She monitored her on-camera expression, kept her alignment serious/neutral. "Markets react to new information, Dale. You might say that's all they do, day after day. But like you say, I've been meeting with your peers back to back this morning and talking about our future, so I don't have specific input on this morning's short-term corrections—"

A puffy gentleman in the upper left square baited her under his breath, "No surprise from a know-nothing snowflake spokesmodel…your marketing stunt wiped out millions of hardworking American's retirements."

Snowflake-card? Really?

Hyperbolist boomer, William 'Willy' Vambrese, representing the less populated Dakota. Chloe's partial dossier painted a picture of an oil-money US Senate-lifer and sometime influence-for-hire. Predictable traditionalist. Inactive on intelligence oversight, a skeptic of non-fossil energy, critic of warming-science. Pro-military intervention and expansion, allegedly religious and pro-family (three grown children, estranged; on his third twenty-something trophy-wife), and a frequently offensive pundit on a wide variety of unrelated social issues. All of which linearly tracked to the agendas of the sources of his campaign donations. Raised prize-winning hunting dogs on his multi-acre ranch, rarely seen in public without his trademark can of diet soda, and behind the scenes, held a tangled nest of investments, board positions, and unattended offshore accounts.

And, in an astonishingly rare alignment of the stars, he's also 100% a dick!

Before she could respond to this second word-grenade, another guest moshed in.

"Markets also react to disinformation." Young man with dark, wild, curly hair.

Tech market skeptic and West Coast gadfly, Brian Staler. Mathematician, vegan, critic of the Great Algorithmic Takeover, and frequent blogger on the darker intersections of government, business, and tech. Often championed the ideal of the 'individual,' flag-waver against imbalance of power, and the potential for misuse or abuse made possible by the kinds of systems behind smart cities, self-driving cars, and pervasive data capture and surveillance.

So…ten seconds in, and it's already three against one.

Dipping in and out of real-time, Chloe quickly re-read everything Staler had ever published.

His written arguments were confrontational, sarcastic, fatalistic, and used broken assumptions as foundations. But were often oddly well-reasoned despite all that. His conclusions unerringly focused on the negatives without regard for any positive trade-offs. But to Chloe's eye, it seemed as if he was at least coming from a place of concern for people in society. Albeit with a heavy blanket of cynical, negative-worldview, fed by a deep-rooted mistrust of authority. Given the events of the first timeline, he wasn't even entirely wrong. If somehow massively incorrect at the same time.

She re-analyzed his voice, highlighting subvocal negative harmonics - stress; reversed the direction of his eye movements, extrapolated, reconstructed recent stream-data from his ISP. A quick scan of his environment showed open windows to his stock portfolio, currently down 35% for the morning.

Ah.

When dealing with an optimist, focus on potential upside. But for a pessimist, focus on safer, more conservative outcomes.

Chloe saw the opportunity, ignored the Senator's generation-baiting snark, responded to Staler instead. "You're right - initially, that's correct; information can be true or false. And unfortunately, disinformation repeated with enough authority over a long enough period can also become a sort of truth that people and societies become fully invested in, one they'll fight to maintain without care for evidence or the obvious consequences ahead. But, you know, someone once wrote that 'reality is the final arbiter of truth' - so to close the original loop, all these uncertainties will give way to proofs, and the markets will settle back to our new reality soon enough."

It was a compound statement designed for Staler alone. Over nine frames of the source 4k stream, his pupils contracted four percent while his face flushed by a similar percentage. Chloe calculated that accepting his position, soothing his unspoken financial fears, weaving in the notion of eventual personal philosophical vindication, while low-key dropping a quote from one of his self-proclaimed personal heroes would tilt him ever-so-slightly her way.

If this was to be a game of rounds, then every roll, every move, had to be a push or a pull. The deck was stacked six to one. Seven, if she counted the host, who presented only the thinnest veneer of objectivity.

But it doesn't have to stay this way.

Merely defending MCCP's position wasn't exciting enough to command her full attention. Re-aligning the other players was her bonus challenge and present game.

To Chloe's sense of time, the interactions up 'til this point had taken somewhere between a few minutes to a few hours, depending on frame of reference. In reviewing the footage, the 4-party back and forth lasted under twenty seconds of real-time. It's almost cheating…but if Max can do this—

Another man-square chimed in over his overly-reflective silver tie, "If your…contemporary futurist and science fiction pals are to be believed…we'll see an endless, exponential growth curve next…disconnected from labor or…or dreams or…human effort of any measure. Is that what you believe in, Miss Price? Is that…magical future where you see our western markets and economies heading instead?"

Mid-length grey hair, dark bushy brows, with wire-rimmed rectangular glasses resting halfway down his nose. North-eastern inflections delivered with a selectively odd cadence; probably an affectation. Daniel Chadwick, 'Science Expert.' Or at least, well-educated as a chemist, working as a part-time hack and lobbyist for the petroleum industry, while co-chairing a 'Federal Energy Advisory Committee" to the president - which was itself staffed and funded entirely by oil and gas industry players, suppliers and investors.

Chloe sidestepped the mental distraction-trap of unspooling how those two roles could be seen as remotely different.

In response to Chadwick-guy, Willy-the-Dick nodded along, chuckling, "To infinity and beyond, eh? Heh, heh, heh." Made a 'zoom' motion with his hand like it was a fat, unstable meat plane taking off, gliding, only to auger into his desktop in a fiery explosion.

A couple of panelists chuckled.

Chloe noted which ones - who led from the throat, and which carried it up from the diaphragm. In other words, who abstained, who went along to get along, and who was of a similar mind. Fresh data refining her ongoing simulations.

Chadwick raised one bushy brow.

Before Chloe could dive into the corrective nuance of likely winners, losers, and the long-term curve of market yields at the transition to an age where everyone enjoyed the benefits of free time and extreme wealth - yet money was functionally meaningless - Dale Murran set another trap, redirecting the conversation closer to home.

"Speaking of proofs - I'd like to direct this next question to Dr. Steven Hussein - what's your assessment of young Alena's situation considering this morning's revelations? As a parent, as a responsible mental health professional, are you now satisfied that she's been acting of her own free will, without coercion?"

Hey - Segue Sam - lead the witness much?

Steven folded his hands, replied in kind but serious tones, "With all respect to Miss Price, my concerns for the youngster haven't changed at all. But without an independent, professional evaluation of her conditions, her state of mind, I can't offer an opinion way or the other."

"The child jumped in front of a firing squad - clearly brainwashed!" injected Vambrese, having zero expertise on the matter. Others tottered along in the background.

Updating.

Steven continued as though uninterrupted, "But the fact remains, Alena stands out as our only public proxy for others who may be trapped in a cycle of unhealthy dependence within the alluring confines of the MCCP mythos and leadership structure. Smoke doesn't necessarily portend a raging fire, but it rarely rises from calm waters."

Wait…wouldn't that be a cloud? Or fog? Or steam? Or…? Chloe wandered off on her own tangents of 'stuff that might evaporate and re-condense to look like other stuff,' noting that white smoke and white steam were sometimes indistinguishable, taking the metaphor much farther than Steven would have intended. But…this wasn't the time for her to pull that thread.

"Surely you understand, Miss Price, your verbal denials of influence are hardly exculpatory in and of themselves under these conditions." The doctor spread his hands, inviting the expected argument.

Steve Hussein, PhD., billed as a leading child psychologist and cult deprogramming expert. A wealth of reviewed papers and a handful of books to his name. Trolling through his on and offline history, double-checking MCCP's records, Chloe discovered no links to known families of power or their operatives across recorded timelines, no serious improprieties, double-lives, financial question marks - or any signs that he was anything other than what others professed him to be. Only half a dozen lawsuits and complaints from the legal apparatuses of aggrieved, one-off religious organizations, all ultimately dropped. Former patients of his had taken part in a variety of broadcast news reports going back decades, sharing their stories in on-air investigations of high-profile cults. In each case, by every account, he and his staff aided greatly in their recoveries and eventual mainstreaming back into society. Patients who'd taken part in police investigations, court trials, or even confronted their former abusive leaders directly, appeared to be calm, well balanced, and empowered. Chloe previously noted Hussein wasn't one of the men who laughed along to Senator Dick's shenanigans - which bought him a few extra points, adding to those gained through his impressive bio.

People want agency.

Give them options.

…and…something-something bend like a reed in the wind!

Without missing a beat, Chloe answered, "I understand. The 'cult' thing is offensive and laughable, but you don't have a way to know that from where you sit. You're the expert - why don't you come out to Vegas for an independent evaluation of Alena yourself? Will that satisfy the question for all concerned?"

Steven's expression remained frozen.

Chloe rolled on, "I'm sure she'd meet with you, and the network should be willing to pay your expenses to keep things objective. If her dad gives the green light, you'll have full access to Alena, and our complete cooperation - or our absence."

Chloe wanted more time with him - and for Soph to have her run - before she could be sure. But given his temperament and bona-fides, she suspected he might be a decent person - someone useful they could bring over the wall. Two birds. Defusing the Alena / cult topic once and for all. Plus, ninja-recruiting. Off-camera, of course.

Between the early fallout of collapsing hierarchies, ramping ops rescues, and their more recent work with the UN HRC on human trafficking, MCCP staffers met an increasing number of compromised individuals they frankly lacked the training or expertise to manage delicately. Best they'd been able to do was minimize harm while speeding after-action handoffs to the pros.

Everyone would benefit from a practiced advisor on their team who could help update protocols and training for front-line folks. And perhaps lead an in-house team managing the victim recovery processes when helping refugee Talents or others whose insider-knowledge or experiences were causatively entwined with their traumas or conditions; cases outsiders couldn't reach without knowing the hidden contexts. Those mostly fell to inside telepaths at present, and while they were often able to get to the truth of things, only one, Margaret, was clinically trained and qualified to guide a patient forward from that point toward eventual recovery.

Fractions of a second slipped by. Chloe observed him closely. In her view of his raw, uncompressed feed, he accepted instantaneously, without obvious calculation.

"How soon could I meet with her?" he asked.

"As soon as you can get here," shot back Chloe.

He nodded. "This is an unexpected but welcome surprise, Miss Price. For the sake of Alena, and potentially others, I'd like to go forward at once. Mr. Murran, perhaps we should discuss arrangements with your producers offline?"

Their host, surprised at the rapid-fire of Chloe's acquiescence and Dr. Hussein's agreement, favored his ear for the briefest moment before answering. "Let's reconnect after the show - we want exclusive documentary access, of course."

Chloe shrugged. "Sure."

Dr. Hussein nodded. "I need the discretion to remove the cameras for any reason. We'll need participation by her father for clinical, legal, and ethical reasons given her age and circumstances - but with those conditions, a small presence shouldn't interfere with my evaluation."

Two of the other panelists shifted uncomfortably.

Chloe noted which ones, updating her models.

Sorry - this round goes to me, bitches.

Reviewing playback, the entire show had been on air for under a minute, and she'd already navigated two contentious issues while taking the edge off one panelist - and scouting at least one potentially valuable ally.

Go me! If I can keep this up, this branch might be a keeper, Max.

---

Max stepped from the crisp outdoor lawn into a wide, windowless hall. Soaring ceilings capped walls decorated with threaded gold wallpaper, broken only by occasional portraits of comically surprised wildlife. The floors were short grey pile woven through with matching gold highlight threads. Indirect lighting spilled from shaded sconces beside each dark, heavy wooden door. Quiet and peaceful, a bit like the entrance to an expensive spa. Minus the portraits.

She raised her hand to the nearest numbered door, but before she could knock, it opened inward. "Hey."

Sophie, in flowing PJs, yawned, covering her mouth. "Morning."

"Sorry to bug, can I — "

But Soph had already taken Max's arm, pulling her in.

Her living room's blackout curtains were drawn, leaving only the light-leaks of morning and the uneven glow of the flatscreen for illumination. Sophie offered Max tea from the set already staged on the organically rounded coffee table.

"Thanks."

Sophie had the best teas. If rarely the same blends twice. Max had long-since realized if she wanted a particular cup of tea a second time, she'd have to get the details before leaving. Or take the risk of disrupting timelines with a jump back.

Max sank back into her side of the over-floofed fabric sofa, grabbing one of the many mismatched pillows while her eyes adjusted to the dark. She crossed arms over the pillow, shaped like a ladybug, pressing it to her stomach. A pile of fluffy comforters cratered where Soph had been nesting on her side of the couch.

Sophie's tastes were eclectic but trended toward natural finishes, layers of soft surfaces with unusual textures, and the occasional wild splash of color. The television on the wall was the only hard, sharply angled object in view.

Max smiled as she caught the big water dish out of the corner of her eye. Hector repatriated Emo in an earlier visit, leaving Max to imagine the racetrack paths their tiny monster had forged around the condo while they'd been away. Hopefully, he'd been more comfort than irritation while Soph waited out her seasonal migraines.

Sophie gathered her sleeves, poured thick golden tea from the squat pot into tall, clear glasses.

Max leaned forward, grabbed hers by the handle, settled backward, bringing the glass under her nose. "Hmmmm." Warm vapor rose to meet her, carrying the delicate scent of oolong, paired with a dusting of cinnamon, and something else she couldn't identify.

Answering Max's unspoken question, Sophie smiled. "After it began to cool, I floated a single twist of sage."

Max sipped. "It's good." Sophie would have picked up Max's enjoyment regardless, but there was still meaning in sharing the compliment directly.

"Thanks. And I'm well enough; the light at the end of the tunnel is close."

"Are you—"

"The last of it will fade whether I'm here or somewhere more helpful. Let me clean up and get dressed?"

Max nodded, sipped, and unconsciously snuggled further into the sofa. She'd let down her auto-pilot mental defenses back in the hallway, so Sophie doubtless had a clear understanding of what was up.

After the morning's travels, it was nice to relax in the soft for a few minutes.

As Soph swished away behind her, the screen on the wall captured Max's attention, cut from an older gentleman to a close-up of Chloe. Subtitles struggled to keep up with the rapid back and forth of the live conversations, stacking vertically to represent overlapping voices from multiple parties.

"Hmm? That looks fun."

---

John locked his borrowed chair-back into the upright position, dividing attention between the floating ceiling-height holos of the various live feeds Chloe generated for the assigned floor team, and the activities of the people in between. Pods of teammates diligently traced communications logs and trails backward from the point of program change-up at the network, hoping to unmask the source.

Whoever made that call's about to have a crowded day.

He'd camped at the office overnight, borrowing an offline sleep capsule for a few hours to save late and early travel time, predicting shenanigans. One advantage of having Trace in the loop, he'd only texted her 'staying over,' and it was all the explanation she needed. Having her on board smoothed out a lot between them, and he wasn't sure yet how to properly thank Max and Chloe for taking a chance on her.

He slammed back the last of a paper-cup latte from upstairs, long cold, set the empty container at his feet.

Despite their media chaos, the requirements of the day-to-day soldiered on. Before he'd come down for the show, he'd been briefed on the typical background of global ops activities underway, potential trouble-spots, as well as the NYC office's joint-op with the Brussels team, running deep surveillance on the multinational private equity COO who allegedly dropped the Journal's editor, Patricia Tanner, the initial direction to support the publication's works of fiction about Max and MCCP. The evolving network diagrams running outward from his photo began to resemble a proper spider's web. The infograph would no doubt progress as the late European afternoon turned to evening.

Meanwhile, he wasn't the only one on his current floor with eyes on Chloe. Most folks not actively engaged in time-sensitive tasks or deliverables watched the holos ringing the far side of the workspace.

It was clear that their adversaries, by way of the network's producers - and their hand-picked guests with predictable agendas - meant to take some air out of Chloe after her surprise morning performances on other networks. Despite their rough handling, she was holding her own. Expected no less, of course.

A noise from outside. A gaggle of boisterous operators fresh from the field crashed in through the hub-side entrance, disrupting. Mud still on their boots, two former Rangers carried another like a king, dumped him on his feet over the threshold. There were eight in all. Old friends. They headed John's way.

"Michaels! My man! They told us you were slummin' it on the lower floors with the rank and file. Had to see it to believe it. Uh. Brought you a present!"

"Strauss - you shouldn't have."

"No, you know —"

"No, I mean it. You know I can't stand those vegan whole-grain low-cal air-fried shitballs you call donuts."

Strauss caught an arrow with his heart. "You wound me. You think I'd do that to you?" Behind his back, he desperately handed off the softbox from a local vegan bakery.

One of his compatriots suggested a bacon run instead.

John laughed. "Watch the boots. You guys didn't need an excuse."

One of the men who carried in Strauss shrugged. "Best seats in the house, right?"

"Great minds." Turning back, John waved his hands, faking annoyance as he ushered them in. "Some people work for a living. Keep it down, losers."

All eight interlopers cartoon-tip-toed to John's section of the floor, catching a few scattered smiles from distracted watchers as they piled into spare chairs and clustered uncomfortably close to Michaels. Like baby ducks. Half facing the wrong way.

As they straightened out, John felt a tap on his left shoulder; a former Agency field tech named Seamus. Gesturing toward the main broadcast holo, he asked under his breath, "Tolleson?"

John nodded. "I was surprised to see him out of bed this early. You know him?"

"Yeah. Well, I mean, 'of.' He wouldn't remember me, but we had a few corridor conversations at Langley, years before he became SecDef. Smart guy, definitely playing that game, though. I'm surprised to see him up there, to be honest. Thought he was more of a straight shooter. For a squid."

That comment riled up one of the former Navy SEALs in their group, earned Seamus a snappy ear-flick from behind.

He rounded on the man, serious, pointer-finger up, "Hey."

A few others pushed one or the other of the men, laughing, defusing.

"I think he's got a memoir to promote or something. And shhhh," whispered John.

More exaggerated 'oh no! fear' and 'we're in a library' pantomimes from the morning comedians.

"Shhhhh," from somewhere off in the peanut gallery.

On the largest holo, a fork of the pre-delay live broadcast, the program host segued from the previous topic with an open-ended statement. "Admiral, you were a guest on our HardScope program a few months ago and shared some rather harsh criticism of the current administration's growing reliance on 'military contractors,' or as you labeled them, 'extra-legal corporate mercenaries.'"

Edward Tolleson, wearing a sharp civilian suit and tie, responded in a slight Texas drawl, "Yes, Mr. Murran, that's right. It's about maintaining a clear chain-of-command, discipline in the field, and individual accountability for conduct. They have great bearing on how we're perceived in-country, which affects not only local cooperation, often necessary for the success of our missions but also America's reputation around the world. As a matter of public record, during my time as Secretary of Defense under the prior administration, I fought tooth and nail to ensure that it was our young men and women in uniform, subject as they are to the Articles of the Geneva Convention and held to higher standards under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, who represented America's honor with pride while undertaking offensive, defensive, or support operations here in the US, and around the globe."

Murran nodded at the dull, boilerplate answer, prodded, redirected to his next blatant setup. "Ms. Price, as one of MCCP's founders, how do you, in turn, defend the company's reported use of these same aggressive corporate mercenaries here at home and away on foreign soil? Records show...no, hold on, please...records show you purchased a large security consulting firm well over two years ago, right as your supposed tech company was founded - and we have other sources on this…well, okay, if you say you're only a science-driven company - what possible need do you have for armed mercenary forces? And don't you now feel a responsibility to disarm them, given current optics, and the long, bloody history of militant cults clashing violently with our government and law enforcement professionals?"

"Give 'em hell, Chloe!" Strauss shouted so close to Michael's ear, he could almost feel his mustache.

John smiled, didn't shush. Strauss was OG - knew Chloe and Max as long as John had. He'd earned the right to cheer her on. Side effect was it livened the floor up a bit, as other voices rose to join his example.

The broadcast view pulled Chloe's square to the left side, Tolleson's to the right, with the others smaller, staying between them. Much like an old-school western shootout, one on each side of town, with witnesses lining the road.

Chloe took the screen, ice in her voice. "First, Dale, I completely reject every part of that provocative setup and description. You're supposed to be a national broadcast journalist, not some clickbait news dump. Please be better at this."

At least one ops-floor analyst covered her mouth with both hands, sparkling eyes gone wide.

A few others in the room laughed in surprise or shouted out.

"Wooo!"

"oof."

"Oh, hell yea!"

Before he could muster a response, Chloe continued, "But…to answer to any reasonable concerns viewers might now have about how and why we use our security professionals - a lot of our applied sciences missions, from conservation to genetic archival to basic research, take us into territories that are too often left by others in a state of open conflict. As a caution, we've found it necessary for the safety of our people to provide them with planners, guides, and in some cases, small security details. It's nothing out of the ordinary - foreign aid-workers and NGOs do this regularly - but it requires a light touch. And as the Admiral alluded to, we prefer to use our in-house teams - where we can ensure consistent training, high standards of conduct, and individual alignment with our policies. Our security escorts are there for the protection of employees we've asked to go into these hotspots around the globe to do work that benefits all of us. It's our minimum responsibility as employers; I think you'd agree. But they're only there to provide pathfinding, local coordination, and in a few rare cases, fallback defense in the event hostilities are misdirected our way. We're never looking for a fight, and certainly not against governments - which is what you're implying, Mr. Murran."

Tolleson, already warmed up, interjected, "That's well and good, but you have to be aware that you create powder-keg situations by sending heavily armed groups into unstable zones. We saw this repeated with private firms in-theater - their presence as armed civilians where soldiers don't typically travel raised questions about their legitimate authority and encouraged armed challenges from the locals time and again."

Chloe nodded. "We don't always get that ch—"

"—Excuse me, Admiral, Ms. Price…" Murran busted in, finger to his ear, faux breathless. "…we've just come into possession of some highly relevant footage shot by a wire stringer in a conflict zone in South Sudan last year. Our understanding is that these were your people, Miss Price? I'd like both of your thoughts in a moment - but first, a warning, this unedited footage may be disturbing to our more sensitive viewers. Roll clip?"

The squares disappeared, replaced by a shaky lo-fi vertical phone-cam view of a distant group of people traversing single-file from the shadow of trees and underbrush, into the sunlight of an open field. The camerawork was shit, pans jerky, the sound muffled, and it was over-compressed, but showed a second armed group breaking the tree-line on the opposite end of the field, the first group opening fire, and an all-out firefight ensuing between parties. Locals dropped like flies as the original single-file group faded back into the underbrush.

"Boooo."

"That's some bullshit right there!"

Peanut gallery.

Chloe's inside-voice projected over the internal ops speakers. "Yup. That's bullshit, alright. Let's see…where are you, files…files…? No…no…there!"

The broadcast screen, meanwhile, cut back to the Chloe v. Tolleson gunfight staging for their reactions, with the smaller squares of incredulous panelists chattering between them.

The host shouted over them, "We…we…we…apologize to our audience for that, but as the theme of proofs has come up a few times, we have a journalistic responsibility to share evidence of fact directly with the public. Ms. Price, are those or are those not, MCCP employees shown gunning down innocent villagers in that clip?"

Murran waited, his small-square expression hovering somewhere between neutral, smug, and 'gotcha.'

The panelists went silent.

The MCCP floor was not.

"Booooooo."

"Cheap shot!"

"…this oughtta be good…"

Chloe, calm, casual, responded, "Unfortunately, that clip is of such low quality, it's difficult to tell who or what it shows - and I'm betting most people couldn't tell it had been recut and presented out of its original recorded sequence. The other one is better - it's from helmet cams and safety drones out in the field and paints a complete picture of that incident. Studio, why don't you, uh, roll that other clip instead?"

John burst out laughing.

The broadcast cut to a high-quality split-screen from the POV of the lead operator in natural color on one side, and from an airborne chase-drone's infrared camera on the other. Chloe narrated.

"What we see here on the left is from the helmet cam of our point escort. Part of her job is to ensure that our researchers have safe passage in and out, that both sides of the local conflict are aware of us, our route, and our role. In almost every field trip, our teams negotiate safe passage in advance and are allowed to do their work without incident."

On-screen, half a dozen local militia members broke through the trees on the opposite side of the field, weapons at low ready. Infrared showed another thirty people-shaped silhouettes glowing, ringing the open area from concealment.

Chloe continued. "Out of hundreds of trips, there have been three cases where the leadership of one side or another changed while we were on the ground, and our teams came under direct, unprovoked violence in the confusion."

The video showed an angry exchange between the local militia members, now pointing weapons, and the much smaller ops detail and their biology team.

One of the twenty or so screens floating in ops showed the live, behind-the-scenes security-cam view of the network control studio running the show in NYC. HQ's systems noticed John's attention shift over, enlarged that holo slightly and angled acoustic lenses to increase the volume of that feed for him alone.

A producer in the booth angrily berated the media mixer, who denied that he'd rolled anything, and suggested external hackers had taken control.

John chuckled as the back and forth continued to escalate. "Fuckin' Chloe."

"Ehehe." Her inside voice, similarly angled so only he could hear.

He remembered the details of the incident on screen. Returned attention to the main broadcast window, where the MCCP field lead, hands open and relaxed, weapons stowed, continued to make progress talking down the agitated militiamen, some of whom might have only been children. Until finally, a nervous pop of gunfire erupted from the tree-line, slamming a massive AK round into the body armor of the lead escort.

The infrared view from the drone showed the escort knocked down, the surrounding militia forces opening into sporadic fire on reflex, and the science team hunkered in place behind their ops protectors - who systematically returned short, controlled bursts, dropping half the attacking force before the remainder retreated in disorganized panic.

The panelists were momentarily stunned silent. "That certainly showed it better," deadpanned Murran, as the panelists erupted in simultaneous-talk-over-outrage at the apparent mass-killing they'd just witnessed.

Chloe held her tongue.

From the drone view, still running on screen, the escorts rose, checked the scientists first, patching one up who'd taken a couple of stray fragments. Meanwhile, the lead escort ran to the head militia member on the ground. Her helmet cam showed the electrical pulsing from two sticky rounds taper off, leaving the man unconscious. She retrieved the spent devices.

As the thermal overhead showed the escorts fanning out, verifying vitals of their downed attackers, Chloe continued. "As you can see from this version, as with the other two incidents I mentioned, our team came under fire, escorts provided fallback cover using advanced, non-lethal technologies we developed, resulting in the successful exfiltration of the team and their research, with zero permanent injuries to any of the aggressor forces."

The panelists quieted down.

A lone 'AR-oo" from someone behind John.

John glanced at the network control-booth cam out of the corner of his eye. They were still arguing amongst themselves, gesticulating as another pair of network employees burst into the confusion of the room.

Chloe continued smoothly, "That level of skill, control, and restraint under fire takes extreme professionalism, training, and a high degree of trust between teammates. That doesn't happen with part-timers, or by accident - our fieldwork often requires intelligence, diplomacy, and very well-trained folks on the ground using good judgement - and the minimum amount of non-lethal force when necessary - to finish the work, and get our people back home safe to their families."

Murran stumbled, "Well, you see where others might still—"

"These are complex political geographies, Dale. It's been the reality of our world. And the work itself - preservation, conservation, study - it's important for all of us, with the clock ticking for some species. Unfortunately, many of our most vulnerable plants and animals are endemic to some of our most vulnerable areas. Often near threatened or dangerous people who aren't necessarily acting their best. If that means we sometimes need dangerous people of our own for protection, we can at least ensure they meet the threat with a level of maturity and care to achieve the highest good for the least harm. I agree with the Admiral's position on state-level use of military contractors, by the way - but as you can see, this isn't that."

Control of the broadcast returned to the network booth in NYC - the main holo cut back to Chloe on one side, Tolleson on the other.

Tolleson barely nodded along as Chloe spoke, his only fading comment, "Your security detail comported themselves like specialist warfighters."

Chloe nodded, replied, "They should - you guys trained most of them. We've hired the best people we can around the world, and they naturally recruit new teammates from their networks - so we've got our fair share of former SEALs, Recon, Rangers, etc. Working together with their counterparts overseas from SAS, IDF, KSK, JDF - hell, we've even got a few former Spetsnaz and PLA. All we did was give them something new to do, a different kind of mission. Again, what we're doing here is important - but it isn't always completely safe, and it's never easy. Researchers have long been denied access to these critical biospheres precisely because few believed the expense of organizing and ensuring their safety was worth the non-monetary benefits to science, public health, or our world at large. We do."

"Ooh-fuckin'-rah."

"Aoo!"

Peanut gallery, again. Triggered a rolling wave of similarly strange and competing animal noises around the ops floor.

John licked the tip of his index finger, made another '1' motion over Chloe's head in the broadcast feed. Before he could lower his hand, Max and Sophie popped into view hub-side, just beyond the open doorway.

In his head, Max, via Sophie, Sorry to tear you away from the entertainment, John. Got a minute?

---

Juliet had trouble following with everyone shouting over each other - but it sounded like the panelists were trading barbs amongst themselves, rather than attacking Chloe as they had been. For her part, Chloe appeared content to step back from the spotlight when they all got going like that. Which had the secondary effect of making her seem like the most normal person up there. Well, along with some or another congressman, who differentiated himself from his senate counterpart by holding his tongue for most of the broadcast.

Without taking her eyes off the screen, Juliet massaged her thigh. Ow. She'd had to stand a few minutes ago, but her legs were still in a coming-down state of pins and needles from before.

Chloe hasn't raised her voice or interrupted once in the 20 minutes they've been at this. And every time they go to bite her, it's like she's not there. Somehow. But her approach…doesn't make sense that it would work - she retreats when she should fight back, and she punches back hard on points that aren't related to the topics they're arguing about…but…

To Juliet's partially trained eyes, Chloe seemed to benefit from the overall flow regardless, which shouldn't have been the case given the intensity arrayed against her. But even that 'against her' thing was starting to show cracks, as panelists jumped in from time to time to defend or attack on her behalf. It was super weird - and Juliet wasn't exactly sure how or where Chloe was doing it. Maybe if she had more experience. Even so, her instincts held that something in Chloe's contributions to the back and forth subtly guided, shifted the proceedings in favorable directions. But whatever it might have been remained stubbornly beyond Juliet's ability to pinpoint.

That wasn't to say that all of Chloe's moves were oddball or mysterio. Earlier, they'd waded into the details of her previous shock fusion announcement, with a few of the grumpy older guys voicing doubts if it was even real. Rather than get offended or into a technical yes-it-is-no-it-isn't, Chloe surprise-offered a permanent open-tour of one of their live pilot reactors, scaled down to 1,000 MW, which had been quietly providing the East-African island nation of Mauritius with a third of its energy needs for the past year.

She's like the opposite of 'all hat, no cow.' "Ma'am, I don't think you can do tha—" "sorry - what? It's finished."

Of course, that particular reveal led to a knee-jerk follow-on attack by yet another older white dude, accusing MCCP of playing at some kind of great white saviors barging into Africa - which led to a pointed discussion between panelists about how that's a pretty ignorant statement, since Africa is an enormous continent, not a country, and its exceptionally diverse nations and people were perfectly capable of taking care of themselves; how caring about people around the world and helping them build something new for themselves and their futures wasn't remotely the same thing as the historical horrors of state or commercial colonialism. It was beyond offensive to conflate the two - and by-the-way, isn't taking turns cheering each other on and boosting each other up all of our jobs anyway?

Chloe didn't take part in any of the surprising back and forth rebuttal.

Juliet wasn't sure what to make of it, but it didn't seem like it was going the way they planned. Or maybe there wasn't anything planned - perhaps she was reading too much into what she perceived from the start as a near-total focus of skeptically tearing into Chloe when they should be thanking her - which was how the prior show she watched went. Seemed like that early phase was gradually shifting, so maybe…maybe it was nothing after all?

Pins receded, Juliet finally knelt in front of the TV next to Ember, who remained curled on the floor. Watching, listening, but something nagged from the edge of her attention all the while. Going back to that persistent feeling of missing something beyond the obvious.

Juliet shared the reasonable expectation that eccentric, visionary billionaires' verbal game often rode ahead of the near-term reality they could deliver. Painting possibilities for what could or should be, inspiring others to make new directions real, and leading ordinary people into financial or emotional investment in an optimistic future almost required that level of informed cheerleading ahead of the curve. Being a futurist leaned heavily on messaging positively about the future. Duh. That's what she assumed of Max. And she similarly thought that kind of gap was what the network had lined up to debunk with Chloe for whatever reason. But. Juliet had to accept that they, her included, had been wrong about what…no, where Max and Chloe and MCCP were. Obviously. Chloe hadn't walked in front of the cameras to hem and haw about baseless accusations or defend some vision for a promising-but-always-30-years-away tech-enhanced future. Chloe was up there because her people just changed the goddamn course of history. Full stop.

A part of Juliet realized she and the rest of the world were at a stage of understanding a statement intellectually, but reality not sinking in or catching up to everyone emotionally yet - all the impacts, the changes coming to daily life, the—

Her breath caught at the directions her head raced toward.

All that 'we were classmates' weirdness aside, how any two people managed to do all of this in a couple of years…

It hit her again, harder this time.

Holy shit! They've just literally saved the whole wide world!

Despite her nagging discomfort, she felt an unexpected flush of real excitement for the first time in years.

…with everything Max was talking about before…with how understated they've been about what they've managed to build so far…how much more are they holding back?

And why are so many people online pushing back?

And…seriously though - why in the world did those people come after me?

Which quietly brought Juliet full circle.

Why…why have I been so absorbed with myself?

---

Max jogged the computationally constructed security holo forward, reviewing Juliet's path through the MCCP headquarters building one final time.

She didn't need Chloe yet. Not for just this much.

John and Soph would return in a few more minutes. They'd already found a quick stand-in for the rest of his orientation.

A handful of internal security desk-jockeys nervously shuffled virtual paperwork; failed at surreptitiously watching Max's efforts.

Max, ignoring them, reran it, Juliet centered in the photo-real fly-through, fast forward motion through the softened white backgrounds. Nonessential detail smoothed away. The basic search parameters she'd verbally set, human contact flags, excepting Max, were still active on Juliet's path; it's how she'd narrowed it in a single pass. Once she had reason to look.

Parking lot. Lobby. Reception. Waiting area. Up the elevator. Onto the grassy floor with Max. Interview. Back down the elevator. Red flashes. Out through the lobby to the parking lot.

Jogged the recreation backward, past the red outlines of both physical contacts, to the moment the elevator doors opened to the lobby for an exiting Juliet, Elliot Portnoi, and their escort, Hank.

Juliet took a few steps into the lobby, turned to wait - looked up and back, as though she'd forgotten something. Elliot followed, charged past her, red flash as he bumped her shoulder in his haste to leave. Then Hank exited, called out to Juliet. Waved off Portnoi, who continued toward the exit.

Hank and Juliet spoke for a moment, shook hands, and Juliet turned to catch up with Elliot out one of the building's main exits.

Max jogged the security timeline back. Rotated the view, zoomed.

Handshake, outlined in red. Left frozen in the center of the security room. Edges of a small, angular object barely visible between them.

Audio giving away his pale attempt at deception.

Hank…what were you thinking?

You didn't even try to hide it.

---

Chloe laughed out loud for the first time in the segment. "It's not hippy bullshit - trust me, I grew up in Oregon. I've seen actual hippy bullshit, and this isn't it. And you, you of all people, Mr. Pot, can't call anyone a hypocrite." The target of her faux-good-natured taunting was Vambrese. Again.

The studio hastily added in the bleeps for broadcast. Chloe allowed them that much control, although she killed off many of their other behind-the-scenes production tactics. Like the NYC sound operator pulling the volume faders down on some voices while amplifying others during crosstalk - to elevate a favored point of view over another, or to keep the more dramatic guests front and center. It felt a little cheap, but Chloe reversed the play - highlighting reasonable voices, while subtly pulling back the volume of some of the more ignorant outbursts or interruptions.

That worked to some effect, but Vambrese was one annoyance she had to take head-on.

Chloe made no effort to get the senator on her side. Her rebuttals weren't designed to persuade him to her point of view. Given time, patience, and interest, she might have been able to swing it. But in light of newly connected dots she'd received behind the scenes, she found him so utterly repulsive, so far beyond redeemable humanity, it was all Chloe could do to be as civil as she'd been to run out the broadcast.

She wasn't sure she'd make it to the end.

Fuming, the senator retrenched. "You and this whole rotten, spoiled generation growing up with Google at your fingertips think you know things. Liking and sharing opinions as 'facts' online doesn't make you an expert worth listening to, miss."

Chloe tried not to roll her eyes.

A few of the other guests sounded off with objections to his line of attack.

He ignored them, railed on. "Time and experience grant expertise, not participation trophies for showing up. You're all amateurs online learning from other amateurs where everyone's an influencer, influencing only each other…everyone's…you know…sharing your cloned opinions with paid social followers doesn't make you right." He appeared to realize he was going off into the weeds, yelling at clouds, whatever - slowed his pace and restarted more to his point. "You're all brainwashed by the hysterical mainstream media, no offense to our host, telling you the world is ending and —"

Staler interjected, "For the record, the world's not ending - this planet will be fine - it's life that will have a rough time of it thanks to people like you…"

Vambrese retorted, "If we're not long for this world, then it's all to His plan. Everything else is spin. So, there's no reason for you, Price. There is no energy crisis. There's no apocalyptic global warming or climate change, or whatever PC label the anti-progress people are calling it today. We're blessed with our natural energy resources. This is the same old retread hippy agenda to shut off the lights and send us back to some imagined agrarian stone-age utopia where we're all godless, free-love omni-sexuals running around in kale skirts! And how do you stomach preaching to us about how we're destroying the planet when you drive up in your gas-guzzling million-dollar hypercar?"

"Uh. Cause I make my own gas while I'm parked?" She replied casually, pacing it as a throwaway mic-drop exchange others could chop and remix for the nightly talk shows or social, for comedic effect.

Someone has a spy in the parking lot. And it only took half an hour for you to fall into my trap. Dickhead.

Chloe's lips played at a smile, but her eyes relayed no such deceptions. "And just, wow. Do you practice that rant in front of the mirror every night?" She deadpanned into the camera, "Seriously, Max - why didn't we think of kale skirts? We'd make a killing!"

That earned her a few chuckles from some of her recently minted non-combatants on the panel.

Chadwick scowled at her irreverence; face scrunched like a Wookie contemplating attack.

Chloe muted his audio for the moment he tried to talk over her, releasing it halfway through her first sentence. "Whatever…we're the people who just made the best parts of science fiction real, so I'm not even sure where you're going with the lights-out anti-progress stone-age straw-man bullshit? Wrong direction, guy."

Before Vambrese could hit that ball, Chloe threw another.

"And it's such a tired trope, isn't it? Indicting an entire generation as 'dumb and useless' 'cause we grew up with real-time access to all the world's published information? As opposed to what? Strict reliance on mistranslated bronze-age tribal lore, or glancing through out-of-date paper encyclopedias taking up half a room - along with a total of what, three broadcast TV networks, amiright? That's a recipe for an unhealthy dose of 'generally not knowing stuff.' Which, now that I think about it, leaves me confused - how can you possibly legislate so many topics you actively choose not to learn about?" Chloe smacked her head. "Oh - right - cause the lobbyists draft the laws for you. That's working out so well for us. Boggles the mind…no, but I get it now; you're stuck in old-school. Look, the internet we grew up with is just another tool. It's like…like the calculator was to my grandpa's generation - which helped every generation since to exceed their mathematical reach. But, you know, whatever - keep trying. You'll get there. Could we hire a lobbyist to explain it all to you? Would…would that work?"

In stark contrast to how the broadcast began, other guests quieted, let her fire back without interruption. It appeared her deep-dive research and ongoing efforts to rebalance the playing field may have paid dividends.

While they'd been hastily assembled for their availability on short notice - and their counter-agendas to various bits of the current raft of drummed-up MCCP media controversies - the panelists the network had managed to gather weren't fools. So, Chloe made that assumption a part of her strategy, banked on their smarts and self-interest. Because if they were smart, if they were self-interested, they'd each have to recognize by a certain point that if there were a shred of truth surrounding Chloe, history would refer to the news artifacts of this day for decades to come. How they behaved, sided, on this single show might cement their legacies, good or bad, for the rest of their lives - or beyond.

Chloe looked down, pinched the bridge of her nose for effect.

Nearing the limits of her patience with Senator Dickhead, she squinted, deadpanned, "No - to help speed things up, lemmie take those points of yours in order, k?" The audience isn't the only audience, and it's always these same fucking arguments. "Yeah, like you said, energy's everywhere. But some forms are better for some applications than others, some are more or less expensive, and some have more or fewer consequences. And all of that really did matter before today.

"And yeah, sure, you're right. Global temperatures have always varied over long timescales with changes to earth's elliptical orbit, tilt, precession, the sun's output, plate tectonics, albedo, ocean and air currents, natural catastrophes, and a million other interconnected variables. But there are also tipping points and feedback cycles that cause rapid, violent change when crossed on super-short timescales, which is what the scientists you disagree with are talking about with human-related causes to climate change. Which also mattered before today.

"You're accidentally right in spite of your cherry-picking though - none of that is a problem anymore. That's what fusion means.

"This cat's out of the bag and out of the lab…and our merry band of useless idiots just solved energy and global climate for you in one swoop. For free. Boom. You're welcome. And something like a billion other problems at all levels of global civilization. Never mind the new things people's imaginations and clean, cheap, easy energy make possible that we can't even begin to guess at yet. I'm personally so excited to see what people are gonna do with it."

The panelists let her go on uninterrupted. Even Vambrese, red face and all, held back his tongue for the moment.

Chloe circled her victim again. "Backing up, cause I wanna make sure you get this…you brought up sports cars a minute ago? Rumor has it you've got a decent collection yourself. They're fun, right? Lateral G's, wind in your…well…my hair? Gas works okay - high energy density for its weight, compared to yesterday's slate of alt tech - distribution infrastructure's mature, yatta.

"'Cept for the whole 'it's a finite resource' thing - which means your favorite cars have always had a shelf-life. And let's be real - extracting legacy fuel has been expensive in a lot of other ways. Not the least of which is taking gigatons of CO2 out of the ground and putting it right back into our atmosphere, where it stacks and causes trouble. Power plants and transportation account for nearly half of artificial CO2 production alone. Enough to push us out of a mild feedback cycle into a more violent one that would have made us warmer, chaosified our weather patterns, and super-melted more ice. Add to that methane pulses, and…other side-effects include reducing our overall landmass, and eventually displacing the half of the world's population - voters, sorry - who live along the coasts. Stuff like that. Rude, right? 50 or 150 years away - doesn't matter - facts say that was our immediate, preventable future.

"And you left all those problems to us."

She let that hang there for a few seconds.

…closed the soundbite, "So…we put our heads down, worked hard and solved 'em. I mean, what did you guys think was gonna happen?"

Both Chadwick and Vambrese inhaled for full retort.

Chloe didn't give them any space. "But, hey, cheer up - we've gone beyond 'preventing bad' now. Stick even a few of those inefficient, expensive, old-school Tokamak-style fusion rings - with the right kinds of high-temp superconducting magnets they need for positive production - stick a few of those near an ocean, and suddenly you can run cheap desalinization at scale, creating fresh drinking water for everyone - forever. And then you throw a tiny fraction of that water back as more fuel for the reactor. Fill your grandkids' balloons with fresh helium. Use the extra energy - which is most of it - for everything we do now, and then multiply that by a billion times. Tokamaks are twitchy to run and expensive to build - but even they'd pay for themselves in every way.

Daniel Chadwick found his voice, interjected, "Please, Ms. Price, spare us the fifty-year-old energy-of-the-future pitch. The more interesting question for the morning is how can you be so arrogant, so emblematically special, as to believe you can show up at the end of the race, fresh from the sidelines, and claim a fusion breakthrough as though it belonged to you? There's no conspiracy of silence - multinational energy companies, startups, academia, and governments all over the world - including our own - have invested trillions over more decades than you've been alive to make fusion a reality. I'm sorry - even accepting for a moment that one of your self-described prototypes might show signs of positive production, this entire press stunt is an insult to the tens of thousands of intelligent, dedicated scientists, engineers, investors, organizations and yes, even nations, who have shouldered the risk and made it their life's work to lay the groundwork for an eventual post-fossil energy solution."

"Nonsense." Chloe shrugged lightly. "Half of those were closed-source labs - we don't ever see their work. They're too busy building sub-component exclusivity and over-broad patent portfolios for their private investors. To them, the only risk was that someone else would patent core components first. Sadface.

"But yes - publicly funded teams have been sharing their successes and failures as they go. And we've all learned from their work - I can say it's helped our teams tremendously, which is why we're not monopolizing the benefits of commercial applications. We're licensing our IP, but that's mostly to ensure standards of design, construction, and operation early on. A few of our more novel designs can be potentially dangerous if manufactured or cared for improperly - and the reasons why aren't always intuitive or obvious."

Of course, what she didn't say was the world fell apart centuries before any of their blueprints or models were dreamt up. Or that fabbing the tools needed to manufacture the equipment and processes required even to begin to produce many of the micro or meta-materials necessary for their chosen designs was responsible for most of their time and expense - but were also the primary leapfrogs ahead her teams made in the here and now.

Never-mind the remaining millions of accumulated plans for space-magic tech of all kinds shot backward over the branch-walls by OtherChloe. Along with lifetimes of memories she couldn't yet access.

Digression. Focus…

"Of course - we owe a huge debt of gratitude to many teams of brilliant people around the world who have gone before us. A few of whom were already so close - this, where we are today, was almost inevitable." Barring whatever interference kept the tech from seeing the light of day in Max's first pass through the timeline, but whatever. "All we did was look in new directions, give it a hard push, and now here we are."

"Which is where, exactly?" Murran tried desperately to keep things moving in a more mainstream-consumer-friendly-direction.

Chloe leaned toward the camera slightly. "Right. Our entry-level 2,000 MW stand-alone plant designs are simpler than even a 1,000 MW gas-fired plant. A fraction of the size, half the price to build - in half the time. Service lifespan is a thousand years, maintenance is mostly passive, and annual fuel costs are next to zero. The economics alone make this a no-brainer. And that's only our most basic entry-level power-plant replacement. We've already covered the scaled-down prototypes…"

Back to Max's real interview with Juliet that no one ever had the chance to read.

"TL;DR - we - and I mean all of us now - are gonna light our cities, light up our oceans, free each other from real need and fear, and bring personal freedom and extreme luxury to everyone…we'll finally recreate the wild spaces and wild creatures we've lost, power a global network of space elevators, skyhooks and orbital rings; harvest asteroids, even our sun, to build our interstellar infrastructure - and colonize our solar system over the next hundred years. And then out to the stars beyond. Because that's also what fusion means."

And to close the loop with Senator Assface…

"Meanwhile, closer to home, minor side-effect of clean, cheap energy is that we'll reverse the processes that led to excess carbon in our atmosphere in the first place. We're gonna create a new carbon cycle by powering systems that pull carbon, hydrocarbon, whatever, literally out of thin air to make new gasoline—"

"No, no - you're not talking real gas," Vambrese interrupted, sitting back, waving his hand in front of his face.

Wait - what? That's what you object to?!

"She's over-simplifying…but chemically speaking, she's correct, William," winced resident chemist and oil industry lobbyist, Daniel Chadwick.

Chloe gave a brief nod to the camera, a courtesy aimed Daniel for his quasi-supportive comment. Continued, "It was real enough to get me here today in my gas-guzzling million-dollar hypercar." She smirked. "We just added to the useful lifetime of your car collection, dude - if nothing else, you should be grateful for that."

The senator didn't appear overtly grateful.

"But…I suppose the more widely relevant upshot is, we'll make gas on the fly, use what we want, store the rest - while intentionally maintaining whatever atmospheric levels of CO2 we'd like - forever now. We're breaking all the negative feedback cycles that led to the beginnings of climate change, in favor of something we can stably manage for all our benefit. In a way, we just took control of the weather, too. That's where real diplomats, scientists, and politicians will need to come together - to develop ethical frameworks, global agreements on policies, and the right levels to maintain and so on.

"So yeah. It doesn't even matter - really - we'll have new direct fusion-electric cars soon, sure, but there's no reason for me or you to stop using gas. We've got over a century of it in our atmosphere to convert and sequester. Granted, retrofit in-tank air-to-gas converters powered by micro-fusion reactors kill the global economics of fuel production and distribution…which is where a lot of your donor's objections will probably come from, but necessary sacrifices for a safe, clean world for all life, yeah?"

Vambrese continued to shake his head, looking away from the camera.

Chadwick looked like he'd consumed a whole, unpeeled lemon.

Others' expressions were harder to read. Mostly. Halfway to catching up. One, Congressman Fred Harkenberry, a senior member of the House and former astronaut, wore an expression of open interest. Although he'd been a curiously silent panelist thus far in the broadcast.

Turning her attention outward to their larger game, Chloe's closing jab aimed squarely at the remaining bulk of Them, watching live or briefed by their minions later. "This is having our cake and eating it too. While making more cake. We all win. That was our promise."

A hidden-in-global-broadcast reminder of the deal they were all offered by Max. And an underscored point that this accelerating timetable of disruptive change was a direct response to holdouts among them currently trying to fuck with MCCP, in spite of their generosity and patience.

---

Max opened directly. "Tell me about the memory stick you handed Juliet Watson."

Hank, seated opposite Max at the plain white table, shook his head unconsciously, appeared genuinely nonplussed. His hands rested apart, palms-down on the tabletop. "Ma'am?" His eyes jogged back and forth between John, Sophie, and Max, searching for hints.

Max remained quiet.

Sophie's chair creaked a few feet behind Max as she crossed her legs, placed her hands on her knee. The door beside her closed, sealing the room.

John loomed, agitated, slowly pacing the gap between them.

Max read Hank's face for any visible signs of deception.

Narrow black tie and back straight, he finally asked, "Is this a perp talk? This feels like a lot like a perp talk - but I can't for the life of me imagine what I might have done. Or will do? Whatever tense - you understand what I mean?"

His eyes finally came to rest on Sophie. He smiled warmly, turned his palms up, as though inviting her to clear up whatever questions they might have.

Sophie stood, leaned forward, tapped Max's shoulder lightly. Retreated backward through the opening door, silent as a wraith.

John lingered only a moment, pulling Max's chair for her as she rose. Both exited together.

Sophie made a reassuring 'wait' gesture to Hank as she closed the door.

Once all three were in the outer security office, Sophie explained through her link, He doesn't understand why he's here, and he doesn't know what it is you're asking. He's convinced that he's done nothing wrong. Unfortunately for us, he's unaware of holes in his memory. The human mind regularly paints over inconsistencies.

John, irritated, gave her a physical eye-roll. You couldn't have told us that in there?

Max side-eyed John. Back to Soph. Holes.

Sophie didn't react to John's impatience, responding, I took your lead - what you would have done if you'd had the information and given it some thought. You have an uncomfortable wealth of interrogation training for one who has done so little of it. By removing ourselves when we did, we've deprived him of any information other than Max's questions of the drive. He knows our line of inquiry, but without further context. He's only a C-class talent - a people-prognosticator, reading occasional fragments ten minutes away, and again a week ahead. This leaves us a brief window to conclude our investigation without tripping over his viewpoints.

You think he'll see what's coming, and then what?

I don't know, John - I'm not a prognosticator or strategist. I'm only trying to preserve for us the broadest possible range of options. Yes, Max, holes. It appears his memory has been pruned or altered - Hector might have a better description. I'm already reaching out. By all indications, Mr. Larsen is either an innocent victim of manipulation, or he has co-conspirators masking his actions from himself and any ambient scans or talents who encountered him.

John softened. Sorry. Sorry, Soph.

She waved off his apology as though it were unnecessary.

Max closed her eyes. He's not the only one then. Shit.

Sophie shared a grim smile. Correct. We're looking for one or more individuals, who may also be insiders, or out in the wild. Talents; at least one of whom can work directly with the mind - although to what extent beyond the obvious is unclear.

John crossed his arms. Right. Good call. So, the less Hank knows, the more chance we have to surprise him - or others—

—who might be reading him, or using him as a touchstone when looking ahead, added Max.

At the least, it will be one or more who have had contact with him, although proximity is unknown. We need to widen the net beyond Juliet's visit, I'm afraid - I think this is where Chloe comes in? Sophie cast her gaze in the direction of the network studio Chloe occupied, miles to the north.

Sorry - gimmie a few minutes, guys. I'll wrap in a few.

Oh! Hey Chlo. Lurkypants.

Hey Max. Long time.

Hours. How's it goin'?

Bout to light some shit up over here.

Find a feed - you don't wanna miss this.

---

Chloe was planning to pull the trigger live; she was morally bound at this point. Needed to work a few transitions to set it up properly was all.

Minutes before, guest panelist Fred Harkenberry, a former US Air Force astronaut, former FBI agent, and a current US congressional representative from Florida asked Chloe on-air if she'd be willing to appear - without a subpoena - before the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology early the following week in DC for a formal, closed-door Q&A. He and the other members would appreciate definitive answers to pressing questions, away from the spotlight and bustle of the day's theatrics.

She accepted.

When he'd finally spoken up with the request, his demeanor was half the reason she agreed without a fuss. Polite, professional, super reasonable in a low-key sort of way. Familiar to her, given MCCPs average hallway traffic. That was probably intentional on his part, given his mixed vocational background, but she couldn't think of a good reason to refuse. And the subtext buried in 'without a subpoena' was they could seek to compel her if she chose not to.

She'd chase prep details with legal and Jillian over the following weekend, but the optics made sense in the moment. Rapid, public, on-camera agreement to his request sounded a lot like 'nothing to hide.'

Then there was the fact that through their recent (re)acquisition of Lombard Aerospace, itself set up by some time-hopping version of their future selves, MCCP was the relatively new parent company of a tier-1 defense contractor, which back-doored them into their provisional security clearances, direct access to S-6, Area-51, and opened them to limited government oversight. Cooperation felt like the right call from an 'official appearances' standpoint too.

Well, cooperation with the congressman.

The senator was a different story.

Vambrese had already copy-cat jumped on the congressional hearing bandwagon. Suggested that since Chloe was going to be on Capitol Hill anyway, perhaps she'd be so kind as to make it down the street to the Senate office building after to appear before him and one of the commerce, energy, or defense sub-committees he belonged to. When he said it, it sounded unplanned and unpleasant.

Chloe politely refused, citing her busy work schedule.

Vambrese chortled. "I'm disappointed, Ms. Price. Perhaps your partner in crime would appear in your stead?"

"What crime is that, exactly, Senator?" Chloe bristled.

He threatened, "That's yet to be decided. We have plenty of questions to choose from. Like how you're practically giving nuclear power to repressive regimes around the world."

"You didn't phrase that as a question, but whatever. We're bringing cheap, decentralized energy to anyone who wants it. It's about people, not political borders." Chloe led him along.

Other panelists, even the host, Murran, let the exchange play out.

Chadwick stepped back into the firing line. "Aren't you concerned that once your vision is realized, violent dictators will have access to essentially unlimited power?"

"That's curious phrasing, but we're all on the same planet. Pollution doesn't care about any of that. Warming doesn't care." Chloe, expression serious, "Maybe if people's lives are better, if the effects of poverty, of divisions, are reduced or eliminated, it's a good starting point to talk about how it is that dictators from primarily resource-rich nations rise to power and stay there."

The senator baited, "If it's like that, missy, you should also understand this technology would give a decisive advantage to any nation who kept its secrets for themselves."

"Which is why we've made it available to everyone," she deadpanned. Almost. Come on. It's gotta seem natural.

Vambrese smiled as though he was the one springing a trap. "You misunderstand, Price. I'm suggesting we're at the precipice of a singular moment in history. I'm suggesting we have a very narrow window to nationalize your company and this transformative technology for our strategic interest, and—"

"Steal. You mean steal. Control. You realize we're on TV, right? People can hear you. Don't you guys watch movies? It's not happening."

Chadwick backed up Vambrese, bushy brows atwitter. "It would be in our national interest that you not give this away to America's enemies if it comes to that, Ms. Price. Economically, militarily, morally—"

"Morally?" Chloe laughed again. "Not gonna happen."

"That's not up to you!" yelled out the senator.

"It is."

The air around Chloe's arm lit up in amber fire as her holo interface activated through the sleeve of her sport coat. She raised her arm to the camera, where a dense collection of framed windows spun rapidly through the air like columns of a slot machine racing around her wrist. With her other hand, she pinched, pulled, then pushed them all outward in a rapidly expanding sphere of colored light.

"What was that? What just happened?" Vambrese's face was red with anger.

"What did you do?" challenged Chadwick.

"This was always our plan. We published partial design documents ages ago to get people thinking; this new set completes all of those and adds six additional sets of blueprints for brand-new special-purpose reactor designs." Chloe shrugged as her interface vanished. "We just open-sourced fusion for the good of all people."

Mic drop.

Vambrese looked away from his camera, most likely at his phone.

Murran stuck his finger in his ear, taking in the rapid-fire updates coming his way from the studio.

Harkenberry shared a quizzical look like he saw this coming.

Staler looked away at a screen, back to the camera with a half-grin. If Chloe had to call it, he was probably impressed that in his worldview, she'd recognized and exercised her absolute rights over the products of her mind, while disappointed that she chose not to capitalize on it. Or something close, anyway.

Admiral Tolleson appeared unsettled, as though racing to process the positive and negative implications for the military and geopolitical status-quo on too little time.

Dr. Steven Hussein appeared curious but played it close beyond that.

The senator looked up from his phone, raised his voice. "My aids just informed me you released complete interactive blueprints and manuals for dozens of devices to the Internet."

"Yep. I'm bored now." Chloe shrugged, leaning back.

"You've done it this time, girl. That act puts you in violation of hundreds of export license restrictions. Have you so little concern that this technology will aid America's enemies, including dictators, and freedom-hating regimes? That they'll enrich weapons of mass destruction they can turn against their people, the United States, or her allies?! Where is your loyalty, Miss Price?"

"One minute I'm an…incompetent snowflake spokesmodel, was it? The next, I'm some international dictator-enabling mastermind. I wish you people would get your stories straight. In remedial terms, I'm a US citizen, and we're a global company. Sharing plans for peaceful forms of alternative energy is protected by the first amendment - and wouldn't be subject to any export regulations anyway. They can't be used for war unless some mad genius has a way to weaponize squirt guns and helium balloons?"

Stone-faced, he replied, "It's still energy, and—"

"It is. Sorry to cut you off there. You, a member of the United States Senate. I don't know - I always thought you guys must have some idea what you were doing - but don't you agree that it's a better, kinder, more effective strategy to lead by example than by force? That it's better to dismantle the economic, technological, and moral deficits that have made it profitable to support brutal states? Some of whom the US counts as allies for your 'strategic' reasons. That trend has also been around longer than I've been alive if you're counting."

Ice in his voice, Vambrese said, "What are you implying?"

"Nothing. Stating facts. But honestly, if you're looking for evidence of criminal abuse, you might look closer to home. Since you're the one who brought up loyalty, maybe you'd care to explain to the people you're supposed to be serving what it was early in your career that compelled you to work for Russian Intelligence?"

His eyes went wide. Furiously, he spat back, "That kind of slander…! I've served my country with—"

She cut his volume in half.

"—you're a dick, which unfortunately isn't a crime…speaking of dick, though, remind me…what year was it FSB first compromised you in a Moscow hotel room with…wait - how old was she?"

Volume reduced, he continued to shout expletives at Chloe in the background.

She continued. "Of course, it was a setup. But you're the one who took the jailbait. FSB approached you in the Storaya Hotel bar, playing pimp. This was during your first term, right? Freshman diplomatic visit? Your kids were still in junior high. Their agents recorded you with two girls not much older, but you didn't know they had you yet, did you? It wasn't until your third trip that you started making demands. What's the quote?"

Violent disagreement from the senator faded in the background.

Chloe held a finger to her ear. "Oh. We have that? Kids, look away? Studio? Roll tape?"

The screen collapsed into a black and white VHS-style recording from a hidden camera behind the mirror of a Russian hotel bar. A younger, thinner version of the senator, visibly drunk, waved a card in the face of the young woman seated next to him. Background traffic outside was too far forward in the audio, but his voice was clear. "Last ones were too old. You promised 'girls,' but these two…they had to be at least fifteen. (Laughter). I don't want anyone over thirteen tonight, you got that?!"

Pandemonium erupted in the network's NYC studio.

Twitter post volumes spiked.

Chloe's security-cam view showed frantic directors, engineers, and technicians in the booth, already overcrowded from their ongoing loss of control, trying to isolate and cut the inbound and outbound broadcast feeds.

Back of the room, the senior producer bit his pen. In conversational tones, he ordered, "Stop."

A producer and tech on the front right turned to see what was up. The others continued what they were doing.

In the same quiet voice, he said, "I'm only going to say this once - If any of you touch these feeds, you're fired."

Everyone stopped. Turned back in residual panic and too many questions.

He nodded at the broadcast as though it were an artifact, self-evident. "This is gold."

A page rushed in, breathless, held up her phone, and told him social media was exploding.

"This morning's show was already going to be historic. With this thrown in, it'll become legendary."

One of the techs, gesturing, "Who's she talking to out there? And how are they—"

The producer shook his head. "Doesn't matter. We'll make Price's complicity in the hack its own story later. For now, this is a once-in-a-lifetime double-scoop. But we need to cover our asses with corporate and the FCC. Treat this like any other network intrusion. Get security and IT on preservation and forensics - and somebody get the FBI on the horn asap - let them know what we've got, follow their lead - nobody touches anything until they give the all-clear. Understood? We let this ride - but treat everything as evidence. Once the dust settles, this day goes down on all of our resumes."

Chloe noted that the ratings, already high for a live morning show, accelerated through the roof as social and other media picked up on what was happening. There was a tremendous volume of 'OMFG' bouncing around out there.

Back to the broadcast, she re-elevated the verbal objections of live-Vambrese over the video of his younger self misbehaving.

Chloe, anger barely suppressed, "It wasn't until your fourth visit that they made direct contact and presented you with photos and clips they'd recorded."

The black and white footage eventually shifted to color, showing snapshots of time in various hotel rooms over the decades. As the highlight reel progressed, analog distortion gave way to digital artifacts, as the recordings became progressively higher in quality. Senator Vambrese aged, but his victims, different each time, stayed the same.

Chloe blurred out identities, and explicit nudity before the streams hit air. But the point was made. There was no doubt what anyone was seeing. The senator filled more of the screen than any of them could.

The pattern of abuse was evident. No remorse. Even exposed, compromised by foreign intelligence operatives early on, Vambrese continued to indulge as he continued to feed them secrets. Even knowing he was giving his handlers more rope to hang him with at each new encounter.

At no point did he consider the lives or feelings of the girls they packaged for him.

Nor did his handlers.

The senator wasn't the only one who would face a reckoning for what they'd all done.

Chloe pulled his volume back down so it wouldn't compete with her voice-over. "I personally, sincerely, apologize to viewers, and especially any victims of prior abuse, for the lack of forewarning. All I can offer is a prayer that everyone feels as appalled by the actions of this pedophile rapist piece of shit motherfucker as I do. And here's hoping he never touches another living soul."

Chloe returned control to the broadcast studio. Beep-censors were offline anyway.

Vambrese's square was the stark black of a signal disconnection.

The remaining guests were silent, numb, horrified, staring into their screens.

Dead air broadcast for a good ten seconds as everyone caught up from the back and forth whipsaw ride of the prior hour.

Finally, Murran twitched, reacted to the voices screaming in his ear. "We seem to have experienced a bit of technical difficulty…and we've lost the senator…" he ended weakly. A closing statement that launched a thousand memes.

"We'll return after these…important…messages…"

The broadcast cut to commercials for toilet paper and cars.

---

Sophie, arriving a few minutes late, took her place beside Max, opposite the three alleged co-conspirators.

Chloe gave them everything they needed before she'd left the remote studio. Another case of 'connections were obvious once I knew to look.' She was still a few miles away.

Inches above the tabletop, a slowly rotating holo-representation of the drive.

Through the drive, on the opposite side of the table, Hank, Sarah, and Grant.

Sophie hadn't bothered to go deep until they were all in the room together.

Sarah was like Hank - another time-limited precog. They often partnered when the ops called for it, so they knew each other well. Sarah was nervous at the situation they were in, was trying desperately, if unsuccessfully, to get glimpses ahead to see how this all worked out - but she had no direct recall of anything relating to the drive. And couldn't envision the future on command.

Hank was no different. Defiant in his mind. Even seeing the video, he pressed hard on the question of legitimacy - could they be faked? He didn't see himself, couldn't believe himself, capable of working against the future of humanity.

"Light field. Core," had been Max's only response.

Video could be faked. The complexity and volume of light field data was another story. And the Core wasn't subject to the same rules as 'modern' computing systems. Few absolutes in the world, but the provenance and integrity of the security files were beyond question with those minor statements alone. Leaving him grievously crushed by his apparent betrayal of MCCP.

Max replayed the digital forensics trails for all three. So it was clear. From Hank's handoff to Juliet, all the way back. The locker where they stored it. The weeks of surreptitious meetings in empty workspaces to find and pull files onto the drive. Color-coded ant-trails through the plane-frames of the building, representing their every movement between.

Back to the beginning - a single deleted text message to Sarah, itself lost beyond the wall of her memory, and more surprisingly, beyond the reach of Chloe's digital recovery.

Max had a full file list hanging in the air above the drive, though, courtesy of Chloe's quick forensics.

What they'd copied over was a random jumble of some of the same video files of Max doing Max things they all traded among themselves inside, seemingly unrelated and inconsequential internal technical documents, basic training vids, and messages and field notes Max usually passed along when she made meaningful timeline alterations. The security audio from their copy-sessions bore it out. Each meeting was a new fishing expedition, not a pre-planned retrieval toward some specific strategy.

Their choices didn't make a lot of sense.

Without insider knowledge, it would most likely appear to Juliet as a repeat of some of the more entertaining fictions about them already available throughout the more whimsical corners of the internet. The qualities of the video files were better than most, relayed from MCCP drones or reconstructed from various of Chloe's sensors. But the impossible could still be laughed off as CG.

MCCP had the three of them dead to rights, but the narrative, the goal, didn't hang together. The files didn't tell a story. And they wouldn't tell a story to Juliet.

So why?

Part of it fit in a way - Max knew all three, had worked closely with Grant and Hank off and on over the years. She couldn't believe that any of them would choose to work against MCCP's missions willingly. She still had faith in her judgement of them as people - and their good intentions. On any other day, Sophie would have agreed.

But finally, Max played back video clips of Grant whispering their memories away, meeting after meeting. And opening them again at each fresh start. No mistake.

Since Grant had done it before, John was on the side of forcing him to restore their memories - a sentiment echoed by both Sarah and Hank, it should be noted. But Grant claimed ignorance as well, leaving that plan potentially unworkable.

Max turned to Sophie for insights. Grant has to be the key, doesn't he?

Soph had already read Sarah and Hank. They remained legitimately in the dark.

She turned her attentions to Grant. Lanky rogue talent. A whisperer, who knew better than most not to try any manipulation of his interrogators. His mind had been quiet so as not to draw attention, but with her intentions clear, that was of no further consequence.

He kept every memory. Every intention behind the group's actions. And if he'd had the latitude to prevent Sophie from reading him, he would have gladly taken his own life without delay to do so. Such was his resolve and barely contained desperation.

Her eyes widened imperceptibly as she pieced together the utterly incomprehensible truth…the reason…the outlines of massive loops crossing, transacting. The timing must be…

And for the first time in her life, Sophie lied to Max.

"They're blank."

"All of them?" Max and John asked at the same time.

"Jinx," Max said quietly. But John wasn't Chloe.

"Yes. All three." Sophie and Grant shared a furtive look.

He knew she knew. His relief was physical to the point of tears, which he struggled to keep inside.

Hank and Sarah, meanwhile, felt deeply hurt and disturbed by their unremembered actions. It hurt Sophie equally to leave them in such a damaged state. To have become a willing participant in the charade.

But Sophie felt worse yet for allowing her dear friends to carry their worry over the fate of their friend Juliet, who Grant knew to be alive and unhurt. Couldn't warn anyone that she'd soon face far greater dangers.

But there was often a price for keeping others' secrets.

She'd spent a lifetime bearing them.

"We could find another way to force-restore their memories," John said, arms crossed, livid at what could only be a grave betrayal of human decency, MCCP, and everything they were working toward.

Hector and John compared the names of other talents who might be able to help, arguing merits of one or another in the background.

Hank listened with interest. He wanted to confront that part of him and rip it out by the root, if only he had those memories back.

Sarah was on the outer edge of throwing up. Sophie quickly scanned adjacent rooms through others' eyes for a trashcan with a liner.

Max, temporarily withdrawn, reached a conclusion, whispered, "Stop."

"Hmmm?" John moved aside so both he and Hector could see Max.

"Stop." She met their eyes.

John and Hector quieted, listened.

Max found Hank's eyes next. "Hank - let me ask you. Would you ever willingly abuse our trust or put our work in jeopardy?"

He replied, a note of pain in his voice, "Only my life, no. Never. I…I say that now, but I have to acknowledge the evidence - I can't understand or explain my past actions. I have to admit I may have done something I wouldn't agree with. Weak as it sounds when I say it out loud, never willingly."

Sophie read the truth of his words. Nodded to Max.

She asked the same of Sarah. Of Grant.

Each gave their form of the same answer.

Each sincerely.

Soph nodded.

Max considered, then rose from her chair. Shook her head. "Okay. We're done. Le's get back to work, everyone."

Hank, incredulous, "Ma'am?"

John and Hector shared his confusion.

"Max, we know they did it. The only question is—"

Chloe, lurking, broke comm silence. "Spoilers, John. Don't think we press on this one."

Max nodded. "Yeah, I agree - I don't know what, and I don't know why." She addressed the three of them together. "But I'm gonna trust your intentions, even if I don't know the reasons. Even if you don't know the reasons. I'm willing to have faith in your personal decisions to act as you did, at significant risk to yourselves, to the point of voluntarily sealing away parts of your lives from yourselves to protect that secret."

John remained skeptical. "Talk me through this, Max? We can still do more with them - this is too big to walk away from."

"I have to agree with Mr. Michaels. I'm not comfortable with this - I'd like to understand your rational myself," argued Hank. He still didn't trust himself to be as true to himself as Max appeared to.

Max spun the holo of the drive with a flick of her finger. "Think about it. We, all of us, have gone to stupid lengths to try to change the future. Butterfly principals, etc. So, we built this." She gestured at the building and people around them. "What is MCCP if not a giant chaos engine?"

"…and what's chaos if not…occasionally chaotic?" Chloe offered.

"Right. Exactly. We're all working from the inside to inscribe a better final timeline - all of us. Unpredictable turbulence is only unpredictably turbulent the first time we see it. Even with all the outside perturbations involved, once we look backward, it went the way it went—"

Chloe interrupted, "Don't say another word. You and I are same-paging."

"Yeah. Thanks, everyone." Max opened the door to leave.

Still green around the gills, Sarah turned frantically from person to person. "Wait…what?! That's it? What do we…? What about us?"

"Soph, you trust 'em?" Hector gave her a probing look.

Sophie glanced at all three again. "I do. Regardless of how things may appear, I don't have any questions about the loyalties of Sarah, Hank, or Grant. As they were in the security footage, or as they are now in the present." It was as far as she could go.

Hector walked out the door. "Good enough. Guess it's back to it. John? Chinese?"

"Yeah. Sounds good. Pit-stop first." John nodded, left the room as others trailed behind.

Grant was the last to leave, bowing his neck slightly to Sophie as he did so.

She was a part of it now, like it or not. And all she had to do was the hardest thing - nothing at all.

They were smart, Max and Chloe.

Arrived at the same conclusion without any of the information.

That made her feel a little better about what she'd done.

Not that she could have chosen any other path.

---

Sophie brushed off the last of her pain. It was still more present than she let on, but in comparison to the worst of it, she was nothing but smiles.

Max and Chloe came in from the kitchen eyeballing each other, picking up speed as they raced toward the empty armchair as if by some silent signal. Both slammed in from opposite sides, pushing, squishing, and elbowing each other for chair-supremacy. They dissolved into a fit of giggles as Chloe ceded most of the recliner, hoisted a leg over Max's lap, and an arm around her shoulders instead. Max kissed her on her cheek.

Outside, the sun headed into the mountaintops, throwing bright peach and purple bands below the clouds. Inside the residence, it was all warm and beer suds and smiles. The plan was for everyone to meet there and figure out where they should go next for a bit of well-deserved decompression. Not a bullet-dodging afterparty, but some kind of offsite chill. Somewhere out of the way, where they wouldn't become a scene.

"Chloe, remind me never, ever piss you off," John laughed, edging away from the two of them.

Chloe shrugged noncommittally. "Hey - don't forget, don't ever…no, but seriously, come on, guys. Most of the credit goes to Jillian's crew. I only walked through a few interviews, hit the marks they set up."

Jillian was nose-down in her mobile while her other hand pushed voxels around above her tablet. Emo loafed over her, lazily batted a few strands of her hair that draped over the headrest.

John snorted, continued, "No - I'm serious too. You have like zero sense of restraint or proportional response."

Chloe, laughing, "What do you mean?"

John got halfway serious, "Think about it - all they did was try to make your dear and fluffy Max look bad - and in retaliation, you destroyed the entire global energy economy - in less than two hours." He couldn't hold it together anymore, laughing at the absurdity of it all; at least it was absurd against the backdrop of ordinary, everyday life chugging along outside. Longer timelines, insider view, they all knew it had to happen eventually - and sooner was better for the world than later, all things being equal.

Others joined along, still caught up in the fresh surreality of their massive public leap forward.

Chloe pointed suddenly, violently flinging her arm and bonking Max's nose. "That's entirely Jillian's fault! It was her idea to give them something else to focus on."

Max made a face. Grabbed Chloe's arm with both hands, pulled down like she was a smol child struggling to complete a chin-up.

Without looking up from her display, Jillian shook her head, pointed half-handedly toward Max. "Her fault. She's accidentally slipped the news in her Journal interview. All my team did was catch it."

Max spun her head side to side as if to say, 'me?'

Ariel whispered into her beer, "…there's also…you know…taking down a sitting US Senator during a global live stream…" Her eyes danced over Chloe, coming to rest near the ceiling.

John raised his glass.

"That's…fair." Chloe shrugged, raised her beer too, a few drops sailed out, splattering on Max's pant leg. "Have to give thanks to a certain ops team for connecting those dots so quickly this morning."

Ari sipped, nodded. "Yeah - go, team. And fuck that guy. He was a piece of shit. Serial child-rapist. Traitor. Whatever. Faith restored that LE had him on radar for some of it on this side of the pond even before the FSB hack. He would have gone down off-camera in the next few weeks…but this way felt closer to justice." She raised her bottle to Chloe in a heartfelt salute for a well-engineered takedown.

John sipped. "Or he may not have. Wouldn't be the first time an investigation of a powerful pawn gets killed from even higher up."

Ari scowled at him, sadly acknowledging the truth of his words.

Sophie thought it remarkable how little time it took Ariel to get over the doki doki of finding herself suddenly included in extracurricular gatherings with the higher-ups. She was always going to be a fangirl at heart but was happy they didn't seem to mind if she was an irreverent one.

John ignored Ari, nudged Tracey, pointed back to Chloe. "See, though? See? Zero proportionality."

At his arm, Tracey offered, "Heaven help the bad guys if they ever kick a kitten…"

Overhearing, Max reminisced about certain almost-kitten-napping interloper, who remained unaware of the micro-black hole that momentarily made its debut in his skull. Thought to herself, John might have a point.

Sophie chuckled without external context. Max grinned, assuming she'd been listening in.

Meanwhile, Chloe growled on principal, eyes flashing red.

Emo, reacting in sympathetic alert to Chloe's growl, scanned the room. Leapt an unnatural distance to a surprised Sophie's lap, where he did the kitten version of a power pose, like some wee fearsome protector against all evil.

Trace looked up at John, motioned toward Chloe, deadpan, "I do see what you mean, though. She's scary sometimes. Something in her eyes…" She smirked as Max joined them in laughter.

Ari rested her head back onto the sofa cushion, a curious smile playing on her lips. "Really, though - can you imagine if the roles had been reversed from the start? Like if they'd gone after Chloe instead?"

In response, Max thousand-yard-glared. A microscopic layer of air around her physically cooled to within a few tenths of a degree of absolute zero, precipitated into an oddly reflective sheen crawling upward over her skin against the force of gravity. Beer drops audibly popped and cracked, shooting away from her leg, taking denim with them.

At the same instant, Chloe rocketed up from Max's lap with a yelp, rubbing furiously at the back of her thigh where they touched. "Ow! Geeze! Warn me next time before you go all Frozone, dude!"

Max spread out, shouted, "Annnnnd I win! The chair is mine! MINE! Bwhahaha!"

Chloe gave Max a single bird. "You suck!"

Laughter.

Max blew her a sweet kiss. Made room, patting her lap again.

Ty shuddered at the draft. "That's how it goes. Mess with the bull, get laser-horned in the face."

Chloe reluctantly reclaimed her seat, jostling for minor payback.

Max's cooling trick was only partly for comedy value. Sophie saw through the antics, of course. Knew the real track record of those who'd gone after Chloe over Max's extended lifetime. Lest a certain someone begin to dwell, she quickly changed the subject. "Hector is on his way up."

"That stragglemonster."

"Finally! I'm soooo hungry!"

A knock. The door opened on its own, courtesy of Chloe's other party trick, revealing Hector. Late. But juggling several large buckets of wings under his arms.

"OMG, I forgive you."

"Wings!"

"My wing hero! Wooo!"

"Okay - so do we take the wings with us, or?"

Hector, stooping to set the buckets down, paused, straightened up while they decided.

"Here. We should snack first, then eat?"

"Is it rude to walk into a bar with outside wings?"

"I think it's okay if you fold them against your body first?

"Dummy. Chicken wings - not people wings."

"Wait - bar? Or restaurant? I need some real food."

"What about angel wings?"

"Those don't taste good. And you don't want a bunch of pissed off wingless angels barging in, disturbing other diners."

They went back and forth with nonsense, ignoring Hector.

Mostly.

Emo mashed his cheek against Hector's boot, purring loudly.

---

Chloe gritted her teeth.

Max dabbed wing-bits from the corner of her mouth with a semi-functional fast-food paper napkin.

Hector unconsciously released a "da fuq?" under his breath.

Guess this is why you idiots persisted.

Chloe cast a sidelong glance at Jillian while invisibly raising the screen volume.

Everyone's chatter died down.

One of an endless series of 'analysts' and commentators whose voices scattered across news programs, talk shows and social, "…I think it was an extraordinary showing by Chloe Price this morning. She illustrated the same cool charisma, the same effortless crowd control, and the same sleight-of-hand reasoning that all successful cult leaders have had…"

Hector unconsciously released another (internally simultaneous to him) "da fuq?" under his breath.

John glanced at Ty. "Too obvious, pretending she didn't run them all to ground earlier?"

Ty shrugged. "Never let you win. Spinning her open conversation into some kinda proof of guilt like that's just dirty pool."

"We play any different back in the day?" John raised his bottle.

Ty set his down. "I'd like to think so. We played a different game, you and I, and with a…a…different…" He trailed off, uncertain, studied the floor.

Without taking her eyes off her phone, Jillian said, "Repeating debunked labels won't make them any truer."

Ty shook his head in disgust. "But some people gonna buy it."

Sophie lent him a sympathetic glance.

Jillian dismissed it. "Those who would already have. They're not converting anyone with this."

Off in the background, Ariel pushed further into her cushion, eyes on her bangs, quietly sang to herself, "Turn on your gaslight…doo doo doo. Let it shine wherever you go. Doo doo doo…"

Max stifled a chuckle. Directed the question at Jillian and Chloe. "How prevalent?"

Chloe had the math but left the answer to Jillian.

"It's here and there. Trailing well behind the press coverage of the senator's FBI perp-walk this afternoon. 'Dawn of our new fusion age' is still the worldwide lede by a considerable margin. The volleys between enthusiasm and skepticism are what anyone would expect. Even this," Jillian waved absently at the screen, "it's normal for these self-promo talking heads to come out of the woodwork for a few days. Ignore them. We're already moving past it."

Jillian wasn't wrong, but something about it still rankled Chloe. Maybe because it was about her this time. All of them. She rolled her shoulders, let it go. Didn't matter - everything had its trajectory, and this angle would be over soon enough as new ones took off. If Jillian's plan went to plan, this negative nonsense would all be behind them in a few weeks.

Right. Next Monday. She already had time booked with legal and Jillian's government affairs person over the coming weekend to go over the hearing prep. She'd scanned decades of questioning and testimony covering all the expected panel members, grokked the procedural basics, so the prep was mostly fine-tuning Q&A for a different kind of audience.

Chloe wasn't sure what kind of relationships existed between congressional chambers, or across party lines or whatever, but the obvious elephant was embodied in one less senator walking around free on Capitol Hill. She needed an assist on how best to answer the question of how she managed to pull all of that off live, if it came up in her hearing with the House committee.

As if reading her mind, Jillian looked up again, gave her the 'don't worry about anything' hand wave before burying her nose in her phone again.

---

Juliet had all the afternoon and evening to absorb the ongoing media and social explosion and to reflect on all the latest information. It clarified some things, muddied others.

She reloaded the YouTube clip again.

The entire morning's worth of shows had been variously chopped, remixed, and reposted in different ways by fans and detractors alike. Grist for memes and commentary.

She hit play on the second show's parting small talk with Chloe, right before they ended the broadcast.

"Where did it all go wrong? As you say, being so terribly misunderstood? Wasn't one of the writers from the Journal an old friend of you and your partner?"

She turned her phone, expanded the player to full screen as they tightened on Chloe's face. Juliet felt as though Chloe was speaking more directly to her with each replay.

"As an intern, I'm not sure how much influence Juliet Watson would have had on the final story under normal circumstances. But after reading the fiction the Journal printed, we're confident she wasn't involved. It's safe to say the owners and editors had an agenda going in, and they used our friendship for access to carry that agenda out. Juliet's lovely, by the way - she'll make a great investigative reporter herself one day. We wish only the absolute best for her future…"

Hearing Chloe say the words - in one way, it was a release from some of the crazy pent-up guilt she'd felt on learning how the Journal twisted her desert visit on them. And in another, only made her feel more at odds with herself. With the rest of her fucked up situation. With her prolonged inactivity. With…everything.

People were dead over this whole thing - over her - even if they hadn't made the news.

Deaths she'd never, ever unsee. And for what? Well, it seemed there was an answer to that.

After Chloe went on air with her reveals, it didn't take a genius to figure it out. They'd put a lot of wealth at risk. For companies. Investors. Nations. Powerful people. With context, the 'who and why' wasn't so hard to put together.

Not that she knew specifics, but the general case made more sense.

People killed each other over insults. Killed each other for wallets and drug money. Nations have gone to war over resources and energy since the beginning of time.

They only needed your name and connection to add legitimacy to the first story. That was all. They didn't need you around to disclaim it - and if…and if they'd succeeded in murdering you that morning, they would have tried to use it to make MCCP look responsible somehow.

Yeah.

Despite Juliet's role in their setup, Max and Chloe didn't seem to blame her at all for what they'd been going through.

If only the men in your nightmares felt the same way.

Shut up!

'Friendship,' Chloe'd said.

Juliet struggled a bit with that one.

Chloe's graciousness made her angry at herself for doubting, for thinking the worst of them when she was out there, if only briefly.

What she said at the end.

Wishing you well…do you think they know what happened to you?

Do they know where you are?

They have to have at least tried to get in touch. Right? After? Max…Max would have called at least. And gotten…nowhere.

Yeah.

Speaking of...

She glanced back to the TV news, where their story was morphing yet again.

I thought they might have been able to pull ahead of it by themselves after this morning, but it doesn't look like they'll get off that easy. Stakes are too high for everyone now.

She fidgeted, attracting Ember, who tunneled under her hands for rubs.

Meanwhile, ESL internet hackers have you hidden away in the middle of this mind-numbing, snowy wasteland…

…with a cat.

Ember purred.

Okay - with an adorable cat.

And then…and then Chloe goes on TV announcing unlimited energy and a cure for global warming and moving us out into space - like she'd just released a punk record or something - and the world…spins on.

And I'm still here. On Governor's Island. Because…?

Looked at her phone.

No new messages.

Gah. Why is Ian so fucking useless sometimes?!

More than ever, it felt like someone else's life.

Like a movie.

Or whatever cliche people usually said after they experienced a life-changing event far beyond their control…

…control.

Regardless of how they came to be in the middle of everything - what they've done…matters.

What it means for everyday people, that matters.

Is there anything you can do to stop it from getting worse for them?

Would it help anything if you told everyone the truth?

Would it clear everything up?

Or is it already too late?

Who do you tell?

How?

Would anyone believe you at this point?

Is that why Ian parked you here?

If you say something, could it help them and take the target off you?

If there's even still a target on you?

You still only have Ian's word on any of this, right?

That they're still looking for you?

How would anyone know if you left and went back to the world?

You don't know anything about him.

He's just text.

He could have been the one to set everything up, couldn't he?

It could have even been blanks and special effects blood and…and…a big elaborate—

Until she involuntarily choked, reliving for an instant the scent of fear and blood and waste and…the life-pressure erupting from holes…and real, unmistakable, unforgivable, permanent death.

Shook her head violently, redirected her thoughts in a healthier direction.

Took a few minutes to untangle and move forward.

Where does this leave you?

You're nothing compared to the scope of this…wealth and power and world-changing inventions.

What can you do from here?

You can get the truth out.

But do you even know what the truth is?

Or only that what they wrote in your name were lies?

Is that enough?

Does it matter anymore?

Do you have anything new to add?

Anything worth risking your life over?

Yeah, right.

Who do you think you are?

Someone important?

You don't matter.

…cause…if you don't matter, then maybe those men won't come after you again?

If you stay small, hidden, then there's no risk.

Right?

You shouldn't matter.

You don't matter.

No. No, I don't.

But the truth does.

That's the only thing I'm sure of.

What proof do I have?

I'll need proof.

Something that can't be faked.

If I can get my notes, maybe? The recording…was on my phone…that I dumped in the subway because Ian told me to… Shit. Email. Journal computers? Back at the office. No access. Break in…somehow? Talk my way past security? Then dump files to a leak or paste site or upload the audio to…

Do I have to stay here?

I should go.

She switched apps. Fingers racing, texted Ian the beginning of a long stream of consciousness.

JW: This is my fault.

No response.

Tapping.

God…he's so useless.

Some streams were shorter than intended.

Yeah, well.

Meanwhile, no ID. No cash. No credit cards.

No cold-weather gear.

All you've got's this burner.

As she set Ember down, got up to go to the bathroom, a corner pinched into her upper thigh. Front inside pocket.

Right. And you've got this Chekov-mystery-drive you can't read.

Not that you have anything to plug it into anyway.

What the hell is this thing?

Is this fusion launch the kind of stuff hidden on here?

Was that tie guy just trying to leak the announcements early?

Don't know.

That's a problem.

She leaned against a hallway cabinet, texted again.

JW: You're no help, are you?

Ian: …

Ian: sorrie. patience, please…I'm sending company toward your way.

JW: ?

A gap of hours.

JW: ?! Hello? What does that even mean?!

Her daily burner finally died.

---

Max gripped her teacup to warm her hands. Not that she had to, but it was a sensation akin to fingertip-snuggles. The tall, wire-framed quartz tube heater at her back supplied a penetrating warmth to her shoulders and neck as well, leaving her toasty.

It was 8 pm in Vegas before they wrapped on their impromptu wing-party, and the group was ready to head out. After much back and forth on their next direction, they decided on a small, out of the way tourist restaurant and bar in the Basmanny art district, in the northeast region of central Moscow. It was called 'The Tent' in English.

Hector and Sophie knew of it from their travels, years before meeting present company, and could vouch for the quiet and the quality of the early-morning menu and bar. It would be 7 am Saturday when they arrived in Moscow, but daylight wouldn't break for an hour. Dark to dark was suitable for Friday night barhopping, as few enjoyed the odd circadian disruptions of wormhole-lag when mixed with alcohol.

And no one would be looking for them there.

Max popped over, did a quick scout from altitude for any random witnesses, then opened a wormhole at ground level along the short walking path from the main street to the pedestrian walkway circling Christye Prudi, or Clean Ponds. The group trundled into the crunchy, snowy, tree-lined park, breath billowing away from them like smoke from an angry hydra. They eventually made their shivering way inside the venue; itself positioned in the middle of the now-frozen pond.

In contrast to 'nope' of the snowy urban landscape outdoors, inside welcomed with an artistic, Middle Eastern inspired flair. The ceiling was hidden from view above colorful striped fabric draping in all directions from the high central beam. Between that and the hanging lamps, plants, and string-lights, the restaurant gave off the vibe of a winter tent of some cheerful nomadic tribe.

Along one side, a small bar was lit in subdued neon shades. Flatscreen TVs tilted in each of the four corners of the dining area, displaying a silent mix of live football (soccer to the yanks in the room) and the local early-morning Moscow news.

Staff pushed together a couple of circular tables, arranging wicker chairs for everyone. A few small clusters of locals held court elsewhere in the restaurant. It wasn't immediately apparent if the groups without children were early risers or hadn't been to bed yet.

When they first arrived, the panoramic window looked out to the frosty darkness, the reflections within disrupted only by the bright white globes of the streetlamps ringing the pond without.

Seated in pairs were Max and Chloe, John and Tracey, Sophie and Ty, and Hector and Ari. Jillian stayed behind, while Emo was provisionally 'placed in charge of MCCP,' a ceremonial responsibility largely expressed via napping.

Max sipped. It was a breakfast menu, with eggs, veggies, and meats - which somehow complemented the greasy wings without adding to the bulk. They'd been there long enough to eat and were somewhere around the second round of drinks. Long enough that light had crept over the dark outside, revealing the beginnings of a low grey cloud cover.

The hint of sunrise reminded her she'd been up since early that morning. Stifled a yawn. Max, semi-content, let her mind wander over nothing in particular.

It seemed normal for normal people not to think too hard about things. That's how it seemed to her, anyway. And there was probably something to be said for that. The luxury of being able to enjoy the here and now. The way the lights above sparkled through the beverage glasses; the mix of warm and freezing air; the voices of friends, rising and falling with the give and take of good-natured banter. Even the distant background clamor of dinnerware and other conversations held its own charms. Not everything had to be a hard fight all the time.

Neither running from the past, nor toward the future.

Quiet was like an antidote.

It wasn't like they dodged a bullet or anything with Chloe's appearances earlier, but they did throw up a shield and fire back - and seemed to hit their mark. That was something, anyway. Still a far better trajectory than adjacent branch possibilities, for sure. Take it as a win. And she looked pretty cute on camera too. She smiled, leaned into Chloe more.

Across the room, a couple paid their bill, got up to leave. Random Russian citizens, somewhere in their 30's. Max felt suddenly curious. What's their story? Where did they come from? Where are they going? How long have they known each other? What do they do? How did they grow up?

They were just here, and now, they're not.

They're off in the world, unseen.

It's true. No matter how long I live, I may never see them again.

Guess everyone ends up as scenery or a background player in every story but their own. And that's all there is. Everyone has their own story, and where those stories cross alongside others, however briefly or lightly. Thanks, Shakespeare?

Back to intersections…

Back to moments.

Writing a timeline was delicate business. Don't stir things enough, and nothing changes. Stir too much, and too many ripples grow and interact and amplify, the whole thing goes out of control.

Chloe's hand, resting on Max's thigh under the table, squeezed.

Max returned from contemplating the power of moments to the present moment, where Chloe verbally sparred back and forth with Hector while others laughed or egged on one side or the other. Max hadn't been paying close enough attention to get the gist, but that wasn't the point. Their interactions strengthened interconnections - that was the point.

Can't connect when you don't touch.

Trace held John's hand on the table between them.

Sophie leaned in her chair toward Ty, who tried to keep the outward appearance of professional neutrality without going so far as leaning away.

Ari slouched, her expression playful and relaxed, looking everywhere but at Hector.

Max draped her arm behind Chloe's back, hand casually massaging the warm nape of her neck.

As moments go, this isn't a bad one.

---

Sophie drifted peacefully. One more full night of sleep after they returned home, and she'd be back to her usual self. Although she'd miss having Emo there, he was a feisty kitten who naturally wanted her to play with him in the middle of the night.

Her peaceful dozing was interrupted by a sudden flare of surprise and negative emotions from the group. Her eyes jolted open, naturally went to the tv screen mounted high on the corner pillar she'd seen through everyone else's eyes the instant before.

On it, an old photograph of John Michaels.

Chloe had already taken over the display, appending real-time subtitles in English for the members of their group who couldn't lip-read Russian.

Sophie rapidly pulled recent memories, gathered that the local news had an international segment, and part of that covered the fusion news made public late the night before, Moscow time. Many would be hearing of it for the first time today.

As a follow-up, however, the next shoe, only mentioned locally as an added bit of drama, adding to other MCCP controversies making news in western nations.

According to the subtitles, John Michaels, a senior executive at MCCP, was being sought by the Los Angeles authorities for questioning in the disappearance of an insurance executive a little over two years prior. In light of new allegations brought forth by the man's wife, they'd declared John a 'person of interest.'

That revelation was the moment Sophie entered wakefulness. She'd caught up to everyone else.

A group of young friends sharing a table across the room recognized that John was on the TV and in the restaurant, although without the TV sound or an understanding of English subtitles, they didn't know why. Gesturing, a couple gave him versions of the international guy-head-nod, with smiles.

'Link." Sophie, voice low, connected everyone to allow them to talk without talking, so to speak. Pun.

What now? Max asked.

Took them all a second to catch up to what they were reading.

A rando insurance guy disappears two years ago, if he's even real, and now they've turned the crosshairs on you, John? Awesome. Ari rolled her eyes. What are they playing?

The Moscow news moved on to the next story, leaving them momentarily in the dark.

Chloe went to work as soon as she saw mention of the LAPD. Pulled a copy of the relevant case files from their systems, investigations, reports, complaints, and a flurry of recent legal correspondence.

She'd already absorbed and distilled, summarizing for the group. She folded her hands on the table, her expression troubled.

LAPD is strongly suggesting you pay them a visit tomorrow, Michaels.

I see. John frowned.

Tracey turned to face him, seeking some understanding.

Chloe continued to stare at her hands. You're not surprised by it?

He chose his shared thoughts carefully. I didn't expect it…but that isn't the same thing.

What's up, John? You know what this is? Ty asked.

John gave a slight head nod. Sam.

Williams? Ah. Ohhhh. Okay. Ty understood, relaxed. That all? He went off cover and off the grid after Max foiled his Vegas op, but seems dumb for them to bring his ghost back into this since he was their guy.

Ah. And since he did kindof try to nuke Vegas a little. Max thought she understood too.

Sophie cringed, watching the various minds on collision course. Nothing she could do to stop it.

…not that anyone knows that, offered Hector.

Tracey understood the outlines of what happened back then, from her orientation and conversations since. So, the police are trying to pin his disappearance on you? Even though his personal life was a cover story, and he's probably sitting on a beach somewhere sipping margaritas? That's—

No…he's not coming back. John confirmed.

Sophie wanted desperately for this not to happen, but the collision was already in progress.

Chloe looked up at John, hurt.

Of course, Chloe would have figured it out at once, Sophie thought privately.

Wait - did you…did you kill this man? Tracey asked, cautiously.

John nodded once without elaboration. He'd not felt the need to tell them before now.

Tracey, vacillating between hope and uncertainty, It was self-defense, then. Of course, it was. There must be a way out of the questioning. So many circumstances the police and public wouldn't know—

No, Trace, it wasn't self-defense.

She halted, couldn't find the syllables that would continue her thought.

Sophie caught Chloe's eyes, confirming that Chloe watched Sophie intently now. Each sensing the inevitable unfold, but from very different places.

John continued, casually. The man tried to murder Max, along with most of central Las Vegas. He was set to detonate an atomic bomb in the middle of an American city full of people—

So…you tried to bring him in, and he resisted… Trace, desperately.

John dug deeper into the hole. No court in the world would bring that case against him. The layers of classifications and secrets and denials, not to mention the powers involved would never allow it. But he couldn't get away with it. I couldn't allow him to move to the next assignment to do god-knows-what to god-knows-who.

Chloe read the files. Read the missing persons' reports, the continued police interviews with his wife over the years. The notes of the private investigators she'd hired to try to find Sam, never knowing if he was alive or dead. His car was gone, which left so many questions. In his one conversation with investigators by phone, John had said Sam seemed a little preoccupied when he left him at the house, but nothing that would give a hint. So, Julie fought hope and despair, while continuing to raise their children without any of the answers any of them needed to move on. Paid for investigators with a part of the checks she received each month from what turned out to be a dummy holding company in the Cayman Islands.

Impatient with this dance, Chloe cut to the end. You went to his house. You made small talk with his wife. And when she left with the kids for a weekend soccer match, you executed Sam. Probably had, what, a cleaning crew on standby?

John shrugged. I was only thinking of Julie.

Chloe fired back, That poor woman has been living without closure for years, John. Her children lost a father, but they weren't allowed to mourn him - do you know what that does to a kid? Julie doesn't know she was part of his cover. He's the father of her children for fuck's sake, and you took him away - but made it look like he'd run off. She never accepted that he'd just left them, you know.

What choice did I have, Chloe? John pushed back, more offensive than defensive. You know what he was, what he'd done? No justice system in the world touches men like him.

Tracey looked sick, pushed back from the table, away from John. Hands shaking, staring intensely into her water glass, not at all believing what she was hearing. Not able to reconcile the kind, smart-assed man she thought she knew with the monster that could murder a man in cold blood in his family's house and go on about his life like it was nothing.

Sophie saw in her not so much a blank as a rejection of reality.

Chloe spoke as though sharing a lesson in remedial math with a child. Jesus Christ. Good guy 101 - we don't fucking murder people, John.

He met her glare, unapologetic. I'm sorry, Chloe; switching that monster off was the call I made at the time. I knew him - you didn't. He betrayed everything.

He betrayed YOU, and you got pissed. And by making it personal, you've betrayed our trust and given them more ammunition to fire at us - and they wouldn't even be wrong about this one. Chloe looked around the table, angry that she appeared to be the only one standing for such a prime tenant of civilized humanity. Finally, she turned, almost pleading. Max? Back me up here?

Max shook her head, wouldn't meet Chloe's eyes. I…don't have the right.

Wait! What?! Chloe was legitimately confused.

Sophie's heart broke at what was to come. This went straight to the core of Max's internal struggles. Two lifetimes of secrets she'd kept from Chloe to protect her happiness. And other secrets she'd kept from Chloe because she was ashamed. This inevitably led to the series of knots that Sophie and Hector helped Max find in Tokyo. But Max hadn't breached the topic with Chloe yet - so without context…the night could go the worst conceivable way.

I'm no more innocent. Max glanced at John.

Chloe took Max's hand, sympathetic in her misunderstanding. What are you talking about? Wait - sweetie, you mean back in Seattle, right? Those assholes running a slave brothel in a fucking donut shop? The ones who shot you…tried…? I mean, I know we didn't undo it, but that was all in self-defense, Max. I thought we agreed. That's not the kind of thing we're talking about. You're not like John - you didn't murder an unarmed man in cold blood—

Max pulled her hand away.

What? Chloe gave a half-hearted laugh. Who else have you killed, Max?

Silence.

Max? Chloe scanned her face, concerned, missing something. She wasn't blind - knew Max didn't always tell her everything in detail. Knew she kept what were probably unpleasant details of some of the dead-end branches to herself in a misguided attempt to put a happy face on the universe or some shit. But-

Chloe's mind whirred a million miles an hour in ways Sophie couldn't reach.

Chloe didn't pull that thread, instead, searching faces around the table for signs of what should have been a common frame of agreement. Growing fearful she might be the only one who saw things this way, she prodded again. Hector?

Hector met Chloe's eyes. I'm not able to judge - I spent most of my adult life fighting to survive the war you guys put the brakes on, and I'd be lying if I said I hadn't taken lives. Including that night I pulled Max out of captivity, by the way - that Sam dude was behind that shit show too, along with that Roland guy, so…I'm having a hard time feeling sympathetic. Sorry. He shrugged.

Soon as he said it, he winced at his leading fuckup. Sophie was the only other person to catch it, fortunately.

And true to Sophie's prediction, Ty volunteered, I don't necessarily condone what John did, but like him, I'm a lifelong soldier - sometimes the op sucks, and there's no good out, and you have to make decisions - and you have to live with them. I understand why he did it, even if it's not the call I would have made.

Ariel put up her hands. I'm against taking life on principal, but recent ops have shown me things that…I can't believe I'm saying this…that help me understand the instinct behind it when it comes to certain people? I guess? You know, this was all before my time and way above my pay grade. So…I'll shut up now.

John tried to clarify, to help Chloe understand. I do regret that it was necessary, Chloe - but not that I did it. It's no different from putting down a rabid animal - it's not something you ever enjoy, but you have to do it to protect innocent people in the path who can't defend themselves. I'd do it again.

Tracey locked eyes with Chloe, shaking her head. Had they been speaking aloud, she would have blanked. As it was, the worlds barely tumbled out of her mind. My heart is breaking. I'm disappointed down to my bones. And I'm angry at myself that I let you in and I didn't even know you! She tore her eyes away to meet John's, then desperately back to Chloe, then Max. "I'd like to leave now. I'd like to go home."

Chloe and Tracey shared a dissonance, believing without question that they were all thinking the same things, living in the same world, and suddenly being shown that assumptions sometimes gave birth to uncomfortable surprises.

Chloe returned her gaze to Sophie. Did you know?

Sophie nodded. You know I did.

Why didn't you say anything?

Chloe, forgive me - you know why. I keep everyone's confidence. Everyone's secrets. I have to.

Even Max's?

Sophie didn't respond. Nothing she could say that wouldn't become its own landmine.

Wait - Max? You're really keeping secrets? Secrets like this?! From…me?

Max pursed her lips, didn't speak.

Leaving Chloe to struggle on her own.

Just as it wasn't Sophie's right to break confidence, it wasn't her place to make up for everything. She shared a knowing look with Hector, who was crestfallen.

"Godfuckingdammit!" Chloe pushed up and out of her chair, nearly tipping it to the floor. "I...need air." She stormed outside without a backward look.

"Chloe," Max called after. She hesitated, resigned herself. Pushed her chair slowly back to follow Chloe outside.

Expression downcast, visibly upset, Max mumbled plaintively, "This isn't how I wanted to do this."