[A young hawk, an unfledged nestling taken from the nest for training.]

(•͈⌔•͈ ﾂ

I didn't seen any of Quilt's group the rest of the day. I could feel them, though, gathered elsewhere. Distant motes of light, knots of complicated feeling. Anger, fear, sorrow. There were spikes of emotion, arguments maybe. Or- possibly catharsis, maybe some of the doctors counceling them. My familiarity wasn't strong enough with them to make the distinction.

That evening I found myself still ruminating on them, and on others. My mind wandered over Alchemilla, over the motes, like watching distant fireflies in the dark.

I wondered what made that one angry. Nick, you're usually the levelheaded one. Though, I wish you weren't so depressed all the time. Or, what made this one happy. Mimi, I really wish I knew what had your spirits up right now. I needed every edge I could get. I wondered, but no insight came as I watched the patients. No sudden realization as I tracked the movement of the guards and staff.

That was the beginning of a headache, I rubbed the bridge of my nose tiredly. Nothing. I might as well be actually staring at the wall... I huffed a quiet sigh, never before had I missed being able to sleep quite like I did now, I needed something else to do.

A box sat on my desk. Books, pens, notebooks I'd requested... With the kind of frustration I was experiencing elsewhere I'd expected them to take longer. But no, here they were... I grabbed the first book off the top of the box and settled down to start reading. After a moment I grabbed one of the notebooks and pens too. Maybe I could make some headway on my costume tonight.

I abandoned the story of Heidi and her grandfather in Switzerland a half an hour in and took up sketching variations of masks. I still wasn't sure if I was going to keep the name- Auspice. But it wasn't a terrible name, and what it was derived from, Augury, was a theme that was easy to make costumes for. Portents of the future read from the movements of birds.

Everyone loved bird-themed heroes, right? Plus, it sounded plenty heroic.

It needed to be something useful. Nothing too elaborate with lots of loose pieces that could get snagged or grabbed. Maybe something like Summer Holiday's costume, I liked her jumpsuit and harness... it had pockets and could be altered quickly and easily...

My mind wandered, and then my pen wandered, sketching masks, something like a plague-doctor's mask with a long beak and goggles. I liked the idea of eye protection, but I didn't like the aesthetic much- it felt too intimidating. But maybe if the goggles could detach, so I could have the top half of my face bare unless I needed my eyes covered...

The lights darkened suddenly, so sharply I looked up to find-

"Hey, you ready to go?"

I yelped and jumped. I think I must have made some involuntary motion with my hands too, because the notebook in my hands arced towards the ceiling and towards Gretchen's face where it poked out from the light directly above me. She'd not entirely emerged, and had transformed herself again; she had left her eyes transparent, so the light shone through her empty eye sockets and a now toothless and tongueless mouth. The very same mouth that was now smiling and laughing at me.

"Your face!"

I wanted to go back to the time when Gretchen was a periphery in my life. Someone I knew of, but didn't really talk to. I needed it for my health. Too many close calls and one of these heart attacks really was going to kill me.

"Stop... Laughing." I gasped. "...Please?" I added when she showed no indication of doing so.

"Your... Your face!"

"Yes. My face." I sighed.

She laughed some more. It occurred to me to wonder if someone who didn't need to breathe would stop, or if there was no limit to how long she would laugh with the need for oxygen removed. "Gretchen, what did you want to talk to me about?"

"Yeah. Yeah." She stopped laughing and drifted out of the ceiling, her eyes and the rest of her face fading back into existence. "You and I are going on a field trip!"

A field trip. I looked at the locked door and then back to Gretchen. "I... Why?"

"So, you know how there's still all this reconstruction? Walls getting put up and shit?"

"...Yeah."

"So, there was this big fire in records, a lot of stuff got destroyed, and a lot of the stuff that's left got moved around. So there's a shit-ton of boxes in a bunch of offices and shit."

"So?" I prompted, "I don't understand how-"

"I was getting to that!" Gretchen said. "I got bored and I was poking through them. They have your files." Her smile acquired a cunning edge, "Bet they have Burnscar and Labyrinth's too."

I blinked at Gretchen, who just sat there grinning back at me.

"Okay..." I said, "Okay, why did you come to me, though?"

"Because I was bored."

I sighed, "Look, I, just... Where is it?"

"Most of it's piled in the director's old office, and a couple other places- all in the admin offices."

I'd never been to the director's office. I was pretty sure that was a floor up, and behind a security checkpoint. The entire floor was largely unknown territory for me, let alone navigating an unknown office. How the hell would we even get there?

"Look, Gretchen, I'm... I'm glad you want to help, but we can't go up there."

"Sure we can." Gretchen grinned even wider. "There's remodeling everywhere, all kinds of gaps in the security system right now. The cables snapped and dropped a bunch of low-sec elevators all the way down the shaft and smashed to pieces- they're still fixing it. Your block's like that. I can fly up fine either way, but there's a ladder built into the wall inside for you. Just climb up."

Her head tilted cutely, "You ready?"

"The door's locked."

"Well, yeah. I just gotta unlock it first," Gretchen said. "Just a sec."

She walked to my door, to the electronics box around the doorknob with the little red light, and pushed her hands inside, up to the wrist. "You're lucky, this is the new model. It's all electronic, so, I can- do this!"

The lights on the door's lock-box flickered, just a moment, and then after several more heartbeats switched from from red to green. Gretchen withdrew her hands, then pulled the latch down and opened my door, just like that. I was distracted, however, because for just a moment I could feel... Someone, someone new there.

I was still staring. "See? Pretty good, huh?"

"Hold on," I murmured. Her hand... It was gone, transparent almost to the wrist. But I could feel it. I could feel her for the first time.

"What are you doing? What are you doing right now?"

Gretchen lifted her invisible hand and, ever so faintly, I could sense her... Moving? Waggling her fingers in my direction. "You can sense this?"

"Yes," I said as her hand became visible again, and faded from my sense in turn. "Usually I can't sense you at all, but I could right then."

"Huh." Gretchen shrugged, "Anyway, we can go-"

"Wait."

I found my voice, shook my head. This was Gretchen. Not Heather, but almost as bad. I raised both hands in a bid for pause, and stepped back, away from the open door. "No. Wait, we can't go... Look, there's a guard station in the hall, at the end. Cameras- there's cameras."

"Nah.

"Gretchen, I can't leave," I said, trying to divert her. "There's cameras and guards, patrols every hour. I can't get out."

"It's supposed to be half hour, and, like, your floor's been on a skeleton staff for weeks."

I wanted to argue with her, but... Well, there were fewer than I'd noticed when I'd started living in low-sec. I couldn't really dispute that.

Gretchen huffed. "Look, you've got half a night shift up here, it used to be they were supposed to come by every half hour or so. But they actually come by every hour, and they're up to every two now, maybe peek in on a few rooms with known and proud rebels, and move on. Medium and high security and special containment are all a lot tighter, trust me, but those levels also got really torn up last month and their repairs are higher priority to begin with. They're still missing cameras and sensors and lights and shit everywhere. Most of the guards are in medium security, double and triple shifts. It's all paint, plaster, and tarps down there still."

I opened my mouth, closed it. Just how much freedom did Gretchen really have? No, focus. "Look, there're still cameras. I- I know there's two on each end of this hall, and a guard post at the other end..."

"Most of the cameras are still fried, they just left them up for show until more parts come in." Gretchen shrugged. "They only have one or two guys checking the ones that do work, but you only really need to worry about them if you trip one of the motion sensors or pressure plates. And I know where all of them are."

She started bouncing up and down, frowning now. "Come on, come on! Your hall monitor isn't at his station, And his circuit takes ten minutes, so we gotta move. Are you coming or not?"

I wavered, and sensing weakness, Gretchen's arm dissolved, and then I could feel it clamp around my wrist. My eyes fastened on my wrist, caught up in the odd discrepancy between sight and sense where Gretchen's ghostly grip latched, and was almost pulled off my feet when she started moving. Out the door, closing it behind us, running down the hallway as I was pulled along after her. Portions of Gretchen faded in and out as we ran, but my awareness of her hand and arm, of the grip on my wrist, that remained constant.

I could feel her, clear as day, and my power could touch her. There was more, subtle hints. I could... I thought I could just barely sense a suggestion of her emotions. Maybe.

It was such a change from what I had felt from her that it left me surprised and intrigued. There was a faint impression of her power, something contrasting, two points of mutual exclusion.

We reached the security station and Gretchen slowed down. "Wait here a sec. Got a working camera up here and I don't know where the thoroughfare guard is."

"What?" Instead of answering, Gretchen floated straight up through the ceiling again.

I blinked at the ceiling tile she vanished through; blinked again, then closed my eyes. Cameras. I pushed my power out, diving into my mental map and the motes of light scattered throughout it. Familiar patterns and emotions. I looked for the cameras. I'd stopped looking for them a long time ago, they were fixtures in Alchemilla, background noise, and it was harder to find them than I'd anticipated.

A few cones of attention hovered at the periphery, but the one that covered the hallway outside my door, it flickered erratically and dimmed even as I watched. What was she doing?

I was annoyed to note that I could faintly detect the guard, walking slowly along a circuit of our rooms. I wished Gretchen had asked me, I could have told her it was clear. Then I was annoyed with myself because, why the hell was I thinking about ways to help her?

For a moment there was that same strange sense of presence, there and gone. Then I could feel her floating down the hall back to me...

I opened my eyes.

"I'm back," Gretchen said brightly, hair billowing in the air in front of me. "Come on, we got about twenty seconds before he reaches the end of the hall and starts moving back this way."

"I..." I sighed, I was just going to get pulled along, wasn't I? Could I even get back into my room at this point? "I thought you couldn't touch anything." I really wanted to know what was up with that.

Gretchen waved one hand at her invisible arm. "I can't touch anything and look awesome like this at the same time. It's an either-or thing."

"Huh."

She grabbed my hand again. "Move it or lose it." Gretchen yanked me along behind her. I was better prepared this time, I didn't even stumble.

Had I read heard about powers like that before? One came to mind, Battery- she was a hero in Brockton. It was a toggle on and off sort of thing too- she had to stand still to charge her powers. Vanguard from San Antonio was a better example, maybe. He could fly at supersonic speeds and create force fields, or anchor himself in place to fire powerful energy blasts, while protected by a Brute power.

"You can shapeshift, but only touch things when you're invisible, right?"

"Yeah, I'm also blind and deaf when my head's invisible, so it's annoying. I'd be invisible all the time if I could. Easier to spook people that way."

She missed the glare I shot at the back of her head.

Gretchen pulled me along, past the security station. The halls with our rooms were arranged in four squares with a four-way intersection across the center and a hall that ran a circuit around the whole thing. The security station sat in the center of the intersection, my room was in one of the branches and the elevators at the far wall in the opposite branch. The stairs required a right-hand turn, and left led back towards the common rooms, the cafeteria and computer rooms through a door that was remotely locked past curfew. Gretchen went straight across, skirting the guard station. There was no second guard...

"Come on, come on!"

The elevators had been out of commission since Elle's world damaged them, and the door was crossed with an out of order sign. It wasn't really an imposition, since I rarely left this floor, as did most of the patients in my ward. It wasn't really something I thought about much.

"One sec..." Gretchen said, leaning forward so her whole upper body stuck through the door. I was left standing awkwardly watching her lower half. Her hips and legs took a step to the side, twisting in place and kind of leaning at an angle- a fascinating sight I tried to place to some kind of action on the other side. Why didn't she just float through? There was only a moment of that other-bodiedness, then a thud as the doors parted and opened, swinging right through the rest of her.

"Over here."

Gretchen floated off into the center of the shaft- gray concrete and steel girders exposed. It was gritty and poorly lit; I couldn't see much outside the circle of light cast by the open door. Very different from the white, sterile, and polished face of Alchemilla.

"The ladder is right here, grab on!"

I hesitated. If I went any further it would mean more than just the possibility of getting in trouble, if I was discovered I would be in real trouble. What's more, this was the edge of unknown territory. The edge of the map, with everything beyond painted in faint impressions I couldn't read, somewhere my power wouldn't be nearly as strong.

I touched the presence of the guard, still on the other side of the four-square block, moving unhurriedly. He'd have line of sight down the middle hallway soon, I had a few seconds. After that, I'd be in trouble, or committed.

It sounded like a lot of risk for curiosity, maybe for the thrill of defying the doctors. But that was more Heather's thing, I liked my doctors and knew I was making headway. I didn't want to take that risk.

But if they had Mimi's full file... Elle's...

That... That was something I could use. If I was being honest, it was something I needed. I'd made requests for their files, but there were heavy restrictions on that kind of information. As Feral had promised, all of my requests for file access- for Charnel, for powers like mine -were all met with miles of red tape.

My request got bounced from doctor to doctor, and I was starting to realize that without a director at Alchemilla I might not make any actual progress on that front for months. Mimi might be able to give consent, but I doubted Elle could. Not in a fashion that would convince a doctor to let me look at anything. Nobody had enough authority to just authorize what I needed; and handing out a parahuman's identity, background, and details on their power was a potentially career-ending action. Doctor Yamada and Doctor Selmy were behind me, and Mimi's new therapist was too, but they just weren't enough.

"Come on, Taylor!" Gretchen hissed.

I gathered my nerves, swallowed down the lump in my throat, and reached out for the ladder.

Time for a leap of faith. Literal, figurative, whatever. I took the leap, I just hoped I wouldn't regret it.

(•͈⌔•͈ ﾂ

"You are getting in trouble for this."

"We. You came too, so we are getting in trouble," Gretchen corrected me. "But, nah, we won't. We only get in trouble if we're caught."

The elevator service ladder was just a series of metal loops attached directly to the concrete, and I quickly realized I should have put on my sneakers and not just the socks I'd worn to bed. It was cold, and there was a draft blowing in my face when I looked up.

Gretchen handled closing the elevator doors behind us. I was now pulling myself up the shaft hand-over hand, intent on the distant emergency lights while Gretchen floated up the empty space behind me.

"Is Heather going to show up at some point?"

"Nah, she broke something again."

"Again? What was it this time?"

"She just twisted her ankle. I guess it's not really broken, but she's under observation, you know, because of the bones-break-easily thing." Gretchen's hair transformed into a fiery mass of light, illuminating the shaft as she played with the color. "Normally it wouldn't be a big deal, and I'd sneak her out too. But now we got all these new Protectorate capes, since the old director stepped down. Gotta lay low until we see who's gonna be the new director, and how the chips fall with that. Could be a huge douche or something."

I decided not to comment on that. Even though that opened up so many questions... given who I was talking to, I was beginning to think the answers wouldn't matter.

"Are there cameras in the elevator shafts?" I asked, eyeing her new and glowing look. If I'd designed security here, there would absolutely be cameras in the elevator shafts.

"Not a problem, they're out like the rest of it," Gretchen said. "So are the motion sensors. There's pressure plates in the elevators themselves... but we're not taking them."

Oh. Well, at least there were some, even if they were down right now..."Can you answer some questions for me?"

"Sure!" Gretchen's fiery hair vanished, plunging the shaft into darkness. I had to grope blindly for my handholds a moment before I remembered to push my power out, into my surroundings. After a moment I didn't need sight to find the rungs.

"All right, first: why's there so much distance between floors?" That had me a little puzzled, actually. I knew Alchemilla was built really sturdy, but I was pretty sure we'd traveled far enough for another floor to be hidden in there somewhere. I frowned, focusing on what I felt from the concrete under my hand. "I'm sensing a lot of metal plates in the walls. What's that for?"

"Well... it's supposed to be if a patient gets out of control, they're contained. Each floor, and most of the patient residences are all reinforced, so they can be remotely isolated in an emergency, and each wing and floor is isolated from the others."

"Mimi said something about that," I muttered. "Something about armored gates..."

"Yeah, everything is like that. Most entrances can be sealed off, but electricity and water all get piped in through these big junctions. It's why they have the utility tunnels." Gretchen flitted through the wall and poked her head through the ladder, grinning in my face, "If you ever want to escape, just follow the pipes; the armor plates can't cover them."

I gave her the side-eye. If I ever want to escape? "Uh-huh."

The elevator door was up ahead, an intricate intersection of levers from this side. I expected Gretchen to float up to it and pull it aside, but she shook her head.

"There actually is a camera on the other side of that one." Gretchen admitted, "We're going to need to climb past it and get to third-level maintenance."

I sighed and kept climbing, reconsidering the wisdom of following Gretchen with each rung. My arms were starting to burn, I was more used to exercising them than I had been last month, but it wasn't a short climb. I wondered if my power could help there too... It had helped with climbing the cliff-face in Labyrinth's world...

"Why are you doing this anyway?" I asked.

"Same reason Heather wanted to," Gretchen said, "I was bored. I thought it'd be interesting. Well, I also kind of wanted to help you out, and- oh! Hey right here." She pointed at a door, hovering up to float beside it.

This one reminded me of the one Summer Holiday had walked me through weeks ago. Heavy, solid metal.

"There isn't a keypad on this one, it's not supposed to be accessible from this side so it doesn't have a card or key lock," she said. "I hope they never plug the hole."

She floated up through the door, vanishing. A moment later it swung open, and another blast of cold air hit me in the face. What was wrong with the air conditioning up here? This was a hospital, not a meat locker, and I was shivering.

"Come on, we're on a time limit."

I climbed until I hung beside the door, then eased one foot over the threshold. I held on with one hand as I felt for a handhold. My mouth was dry by the time I eased myself around the frame. Afterwards, I leaned against the wall, breathing heavily.

The room beyond the door was bare concrete and pipes, much like I remembered the utility hallway with Summer Holiday. There were metal cabinets set against the wall, hardhats and safety glasses hung up on the wall. Boxes were stacked in a pile under a ladder. Plaster dust clung to the corners, and I could smell new paint.

I hazarded a peek over the edge, the drop fell away for at least a dozen stories, before it cut off in some kind of hatch at the bottom. Maybe the top of the disabled elevator? That was a long, long fall. How large was Alchemilla any way? I'd never asked and I'd never really thought about it.

There was the visitor's center and the public areas of the hospital. For the most part, the floor below that was in-processing. Then there was low security, and below that was medium security, followed by the more specialized containment- though, I was under the impression the medium, high, and specialized security sections had some overlap.

If each of those had a level in between, that could be as many as eight floors, or more.

"You over the nerves?"

Gretchen hovered above me, now with green hair and eyes. I frowned.

"Hey, don't be like that, everybody gets some heebie-jeebies around heights."

"I was wondering how big Alchemilla is," I said, and gave her the annoyed look to end all annoyed looks.

"Really?" Gretchen peered at me curiously, "Huh. All right, I'm pretty sure I can get you a map or something." An invisible hand tugged on my shoulder. "Come on."

We weren't in a hallway, more like a small room without a door, adjacent to utility access in a T-intersection with a flight of descending stairs.

A placard beside the stairs read 'Loading docks/In-Process 3/Utility access 7-9'. All this was unexplored territory for me, but I could pull something off it. I closed my eyes, diving into my mental map and the motes of light scattered throughout it. I could see where it was in relation to the rest of what I had seen, and there were some angles, some spaces being filled in.

I could feel presences close by too, see them in the nebulous blank in my map, so faint compared to more familiar territory. I thought one of them might be someone I talked to, but the rest I probably hadn't had much to do with. Hadn't interacted much; newer, dimmer lights and patterns.

I followed Gretchen, and the smell of paint, until we arrived at a hole in the wall covered with a tarp that flapped lightly in the draft. Gretchen floated right through, and after only a moment of hesitation I pulled the tarp out of the way and followed her.

On the other side the floor was bare plywood, it looked like the remodeling was currently focused on repainting. A door sat leaned against the wall. Boxes of hardwood flooring with a tarp over top. Buckets of paint. A ladder stood under a partially assembled light fixture. Tools were laid against the walls. A roll of carpet wrapped in plastic and dusted with plaster. There was a fine dusting of plaster and sawdust in every corner. My nose itched and I wanted to sneeze.

The hall was pretty crowded, and flanked on each side with doors. It reminded me of the administrative sections of my own ward.

"Oh shit." Gretchen hissed

"What?" I asked. She floated in the middle of the hall, staring absently into space.

"Shit. Shit, shit, shit!" she said vehemently. "Damnit."

Her face momentarily lost cohesion, the shape of her nose and jaw shifted, the length of her hair. One moment it was curly, the next straight.

"I have to go, they're turning me over and one of the docs wants to talk to me." Gretchen grimaced, and her face settled, dark mocha skin and brown eyes, curly hair.

"How long will it take?"

"Dunno."

My eyes darted up and down the hall, the unfamiliar hall. "You'll be back, right?"

"Yeah." Gretchen floated down to the floor and pointed. "Look, just keep walking that way, You're looking for Doctor Yate's room, its all full of boxes, there's even a couple outside on the floor. You can't miss it."

"What about cameras?" A little knot of panic twisted in my throat. How was I supposed to find my way up here?

"There aren't any except by the elevators." Gretchen said. "Look, there's no guards outside the checkpoints up here. There's too few. Just keep moving."

"Gretchen!"

"Don't sweat it, you got this."

She flickered, took a step and fell through the floor like she was walking down stairs.

"Gretchen!" I hissed, but she was gone. Damn it. I stared at the square of floor Gretchen vanished through like it might unexpectedly produce her if I glared hard enough. It failed to do so.

Fuck.

The hall stretched down and away into the dark, emergency lights provided intermittent illumination that was broken by the silhouettes of ladders and piles of buckets and boxes. Most of the floor was bare wood and concrete dusted with sawdust, new flooring was being laid down, but a tangle of wires and electrical paraphernalia occupied a space between paint cans. I think it might have been a fuse box.

"This is my fault for letting her talk me into this." I admitted. I immediately regretted talking, it felt like intruding. The silence was oppressive, and I tentatively edged past a pile of two-by-fours covered in a painter's tarp, afraid to break the quiet. Could I climb back down the elevator shaft? I wasn't sure...

Actually, now that I thought of it, how was I going to get back in general? elevator or no, I wouldn't be able to open the doors without her. Great.

I sighed heavily. Nowhere to go but foreward now. I might as well see what I could do before I was caught.

At least I was starting to build a picture of the floor, filling in the gaps beyond what I could see. Interestingly, there was a connection forming between my hearing and the mental map as it formed. When I stepped, it was like a ripple passed over my surroundings. My power was using my sense of hearing to expand its reach.

It surprised me, the rate that my power filled in my mental map took a quarter of the time it had when I had arrived. Was that because I was more in tune with my power, more accustomed to using it, or was it because I had been using my power on my senses for so long? Was it pulling off more data, or just working faster? Or both? Every time I thought I'd pinned down the limits of my power it found a way to surprise me.

I also discovered Gretchen sucked at directions because about twenty feet further the hallway opened up into a larger lobby. It reminded me of the reception room down in medium security, complete with the large reception desk. It lacked the computer center, however, and unlike the medium security lobby, this room was flanked by a pair of stairs to a second story that overlooked the main lobby.

It seemed to have escaped the majority of the remodeling work, but for a neat pile of boxes under yet another tarp moving gently in the cold draft; a few bundles of wires, and a ladder arranged against the wall.

Some furniture had been moved out into the lobby as well, desks, a couple chairs clustered beside reception. Most of the lobby lights were off, emergency lights casting jagged shadows, illuminating the reception desk and both sets of stairs.

The cone of a security camera stood out in my mind's eye, like a neon spotlight covering the elevator bank across the wall furthest from me, and a door marked 'stairs' below a glowing Exit sign. I glanced back at the ladder, under a couple ceiling tiles left ajar. Installing new cameras, perhaps?

But for right now it was only the one. Gretchen was right about that at least, so far.

I moved out into the lobby hesitantly and waited for my awareness to expand out into it. I didn't like it, standing out there felt much too open, too exposed when I wasn't supposed to be there. It made me...antsy.

I started moving again; skirting the room, walking along the wall, I was pretty sure that I just needed to keep moving forward, to the hall across from the one I had entered from. It was then that I froze, because the absolute worst thing happened- a cone of light crossed the lobby from the upper level, casting a circle of light and freezing me in place. A flashlight.

The guard above me moved. He wasn't someone I'd met before, his impression was faint, almost nonexistent. The carpeting upstairs probably masked his footsteps. I was lucky he'd given his presence away with the flashlight. Luckier still that I hadn't tried walking straight across the lobby, where the light was now. He couldn't see me were I was, almost directly under him.

That was a close call.

I leaned back against the wall, and watched nervously as he made his round. He crossed the second story, circling the lobby. there were other doors on the opposite side. Hopefully he'd leave through one of them and patrol through the other floor. If- I swore as he flashed the light on the far side of the overhang, and then immeadiately turned and started to walk down the stairs. Shit!

My heart pounded in my ears and my palms started to sweat. If he swept the flashlight across the room, I'd be spotted immediately. I looked for somewhere, anywhere to hide, growing frantic.

The desks and chairs beside reception blocked his line of sight, even though they were dangerously close to the circle cast by the emergency lights. I darted forward and ducked behind one of the desks.

The guard's steps slowed and stopped.

Shit, did he hear me?

I listened more intensely than I ever had before in my life, I didn't dare try to peek around the desk.

A faint click, "Control, this is Bralow. Do we have anyone working late tonight?"

Faint static, too faint for normal hearing, a short pause, "Negative, Bralow, no warm bodies on the register. Do you have someone?"

"Thought I heard something, checking it out." Another click and the footsteps resumed.

I concentrated on those footsteps, trying to guess which side he was moving on. The circle of light passed over the desks, and I tracked its motion on the walls and I could feel his attention move, slightly out of sync with his flashlight. He moved across the front of the room, the side facing the elevators. With agonizing slowness, I shimmied around the desk, keeping it between me and the source of that light.

Around the desk, then reception. The reception desk was larger and more substantial. It blocked line of sight better than the transplanted office desk or the chairs. I wasn't sure if this was a facet of my power I'd never discovered, or if the intensity of my focus opened up my power as I moved, but I noticed things I had overlooked. The sound of every surface as I moved along the floor, the rustle of cloth on my skin, my breathing. How they interacted with the room around me, how far they carried before they were muffled by the moving air. My socks made little noise as I edged around his line of sight.

The ceiling tiles and bundles of hanging wire were overhead now, and the pile of boxes under the tarp- I'd need to go around it. I could see Bralow's helmet moving over the top, if he turned his head even a few inches to the left he'd see me. He stopped, training his flashlight down the hall, in the distance I could see the tarp covering the hole in the wall, flapping in the glare.

"Control, this is Bralow."

"Go ahead."

"I got nothing." The circle of his flashlight moved over the wall, and settled pointing the way I'd come. "Probably the tarps, fans are moving them all over the place. I wish they'd fix the damn ducts already."

I kept moving, inch by inch. Thinking furiously. The flashlight remained pointed steadily away from me, but it was a matter of seconds before he turned and spotted me.

My hand brushed the tarp covering the boxes under the ladder, and I had an idea. There was some slack, extra length. I scooted around the pile and pulled the tarp over my head, lying flat on the floor.

The sound of Bralow's footsteps echoed, the light flashed over the tarp and my heart almost stopped, and then he was slowly moving closer. Closer. Closer. He passed me, so near I could have reached out and touched him. I could hear the clink of a keychain on his belt. The slightly uneven plod in his steps.

I strained my ears to track him, and watched his shoes. And before my eyes an afterimage glimmered faintly, echoes of steps taken laid out on the floor. The sound of his steps, and the motion of his feet became a shimmering shape I could see through the tarp. His shape. I watched as it turned, training the flashlight over the boxes and the tarp I hid behind.

The moment stretched on, painfully and frustratingly slow, until Bralow turned away and I could breath again.

I waited, let him move away. The silhouette, and the phantoms of his steps remained while I concentrated. It wasn't a new power, not quite, I think. It was... difficult to articulate. It was like I'd put a puzzle together, and now I knew where all the pieces fit. Some kind of nuance.

Bralow kept moving, and I watched until the shape of his silhouette blurred and dissolved. Huh.

Ever so slowly, I poked my head out from under the tarp.

Bralow was still visible to my real eyes, he moved steadily down the hall Gretchen had pointed out. I watched him until he turned a corner, before I took a deep breath, and quietly padded after him.

(•͈⌔•͈ ﾂ

I found what were probably the ducts Bralow had been talking about, several pallets of them, and large industrial garbage bags filled with what looked like the remains of the previous set. Apparently the reason I'd been freezeing since I'd arrived on this floor was because the air conditioning system was dissassembled.

At the moment, the air blasted from a square hole in the wall surrounded by ladders and carpentry equipment. The draft left me shivering.

Bralow was not moving particularly quickly. He meandered past doors and around displaced office furniture, swinging his flashlight this way and that. I was mindful of the light and gave him space. The hall branched near a pile of pallets and Bralow turned to the side. I could breath a little easier.

After he made the turn I caught up and waited around the corner. I didn't need line of sight to follow him any more, and I wanted a chance to look at the remodeling.

A couple offices were missing doors, a lot of flooring was being replaced, and some of the walls were new, I think; but no furnishings- like a new building. I wondered what had caused it all.

I didn't think it was fire damage, like what Mimi had done. For one- there was no smell of smoke. But then there was the ducts... I tried to piece it together, imagining the floorplan I was building, and what would do that kind of damage.

As I pondered this I became aware of something else. Flickers of other-presence, faint on the edge of my awareness. After a moment of thought I guessed it was... in the walls? Did Alchemilla have rats? I didn't think so.

I was pretty sure I would have sensed them in the basements, at least.

The sensation blinked in and out, until I realized it was coming closer. It was moving fairly quickly too... When it blinked between two different rooms behind me, it hit me and I realized what it was. I stopped and waited for her to catch up, keeping mental tabs on Bralow as he continued on his rounds.

A few seconds later I was rewarded when Gretchen cautiously poked her head out from the ceiling, looking up and down the hall almost on top of me. I could sense her in her visible state, if very faintly.

"Hey." Gretchen turned and grinned down at me, then frowned when I held a finger to my lips.

"There's a guard up here, that way. Uh, about fifty feet, I think," I whispered.

"Okay. Cool." Gretchen slipped from the ceiling to bob two feet above the ground. "This way."

We passed the junction Bralow had taken, and continued on straight ahead. The remodeling and reconstruction grew sparse, and then I was sure we'd found what we were looking for. What had to be Gretchen's boxes were piled on the floor beside a door, the placard beside the door read: 'G. Yates'.

"Here we are," Gretchen said. She opened the door and floated in.

I stopped in the hall, staring. The room was almost entirely filled with cardboard boxes, piles stacked level with my shoulders. There were computer components in the corners, but nearly all of it was boxes set out in neat piles. There was a desk in there, somewhere, covered in boxes.

A click, and light from a small desk lamp. An easy chair was pressed into one corner. Most of the personal touches I'd associate with one of my own therapist's offices were absent. Just... Boxes and boxes. There was too much. I'd never be able to get through it all.

"This isn't even most of it, that up in the Director's Office. I have lots of free time, so I looked through some of it. The docs get angry if they catch me at it, but they can't stop me really. I'll help you look for as long as I can."

She flitted through the piles and I slowly followed.