The Conduit Club

No one spoke after we left. 

No one spoke. Not as we got on the highway and left Portland behind, not as we crossed the border into Washington. The most speaking anyone did was Zeke, who only did so to confirm Mei’s car was still following us whenever Dad asked, Dr. Sims at the helm of the Honda to ‘protect the kids.’ 

We followed the highway into the Evergreen state, only veering off at a familiar exit—Battle Ground State Lake State Park. Dad used to take us camping here during the summers, a lifetime ago, experiences that only existed in my memory as flashes of early morning fishing and trapping fireflies in plastic water bottles. 

Dad was in the passenger’s seat, the unfolded dove in his unmoving hands. He didn't move at all, actually; he stared straight as a board and still as a statue in the front seat, staring down at the letter Celia had left behind. 

Put your nose to the ground, Delsin. Sniff out the blood in the water, and come learn everything you’ve missed. 

The van eventually pulled in at the parking lot just by the lake, Zeke immediately throwing it into park as Dad got out without waiting to see if it was. He only paused long enough to open the rear doors for Brent and I to get out before making a beeline for Mei’s Honda, Dr. Sims barely able to get out of the driver’s seat before Dad was accosting him. 

“We need to get into this link,” he immediately said, holding up Celia’s dove. 

A trilling motor cried out and Aunt Sia burst through the trees, skidding to a stop on the gravel of the lake access lot. She pulled off her helmet, shaking her head to get her bangs out of her face. “I think we’re in the clear,” she said, dropping the kickstand and getting off the bike. “I didn’t see anyone following you two at all. 

Dr. Sims frowned. “That’s…good,” he said, sounding entirely unconvinced of the fact. “But I can’t guarantee they didn’t get any live footage from the drone before…”

Before Cat used her powers to destroy it. 

Her powers. 

Brent and I stood side-by-side as she rose from the backseat of the Accord way slower than Dom and Mei did, taking forever to work her way towards us as she avoided our curious stares. Cat was a Conduit. Cat was a Conduit. 

How many times was I going to get hoodwinked like this? 

Dad cursed, looking seconds away from trying to solve his issues through either drinking or violence. “Okay, let’s—” he sucked his teeth, trying to gather his thoughts. “Let’s just try to get online first. We need to find what Celia wants us to find.”

“Delsin—” Dr. Sims began, exhaustion in his voice. 

Dad, though, immediately cut him off. “There’s two kids in danger here, Eugene. She’s threatening my kids. ‘New players enter the game’?” He motioned to Zeke’s van. “Grab your laptops.”

“I can’t believe it,” Dom murmured under his breath as Dr. Sims relented, opening the back of Zeke’s van to retrieve his bags. Dom looked between Brent and I with wide eyes. “Your dad really is Delsin Rowe.”

“Yeah, it was kinda the same when we found out, too,” Brent muttered as Mei slotted between us. Cat was still taking far too long to join our group, staring down at her feet and kicking rocks as she walked. 

“Did you know?” I asked, glancing at Mei. She and Cat…I wouldn’t say they were closer, as we all were pretty close—but even in friend groups, you have favorites. And she and Cat were close, just like Reese and I were. 

Apparently, though, not close enough. “No, I—none of us knew,” she insisted, Dom nodding vehemently in agreement. “She never told me, at least.”

“Yeah, well, I doubt there’s no reason she’s kept it a secret for this long,” Brent muttered, crossing his arms.

Cat finally crossed the threshold of being within earshot—and for that reason, none of us spoke. There was a long, possibly multi-minute pause where we all looked at Cat, and she refused to meet our eyes, looking at the grit on the ground instead. 

Finally, I cracked first, asking a simple question: “How long?”

Cat inhaled deeply Three years, she admitted, hands falling back to her sides in defeat. 

“Does Tommy know?” Dom immediately asked. 

Cat’s hands seemed to become lead at that. 

Brent scoffed. “‘Course he doesn’t,” he said, sardonic. “Because you know your cousin’s the type to leave people for dead in alleyways and tell the world about it instead of not be a prick.”

“Brent,” I hissed. I get it, he was upset with Tommy and everything he’s done—but now wasn’t the time to use Cat as the emotional punching bag for his issues with Tommy. 

“He is!” Brent said instead, glaring at me before turning his eyes back on Cat. “That’s why you never told him, huh?”

Tommy’s been through a lot— Cat began trying to defend, Brent speaking over her. 

“Please,” he scoffed. “His parents dying to a Conduit doesn’t excuse any of this shit—him or your grandfather. You haven’t told anyone because you know exactly what they would’ve said if you told them you were a Conduit.”

You saw how my grandfather reacted when I told him I was a girl, Cat signed, scowling in offense. He barely accepted me then. Why would I tell him about this?

“Why didn’t you tell us about this?” Brent retorted in turn, swinging out an arm to motion towards me. “Jean and I wouldn’t have cared!” 

“Brent, that’s enough,” I snapped. Brent clamped his mouth shut but stayed scowling; he hated being lied to, and this omittance counted—in his eyes, at least. 

And while I knew Cat was entitled to keep her secrets her own, I felt a bit hurt that she kept this from us for three years. “We’re not your grandfather,” I reminded her. “You could’ve told us. We would’ve kept it a secret from him—”

And Tommy? She asked, face deadpan. You think we would have been able to keep it secret from him?

I didn’t have a good response to that. No, we wouldn’t have; Tommy probably would’ve found out very quickly, and would’ve been pissed we kept it from him. But that wasn’t my biggest concern with this whole situation. “You shouldn’t have been alone,” I murmured sympathetically.

Cat’s expression wavered, and for the briefest moment, I saw everything she must’ve felt in those three years where she had to lie to us about who she was; the sadness and pain and grief of having to shove yet another part of herself into a closet out of fear of how people would react. 

And I did the only thing I could think to do; I stepped forward and pulled her into a hug before she could try to protest. 

Cat, admittedly, froze the moment I yanked her forward, and there were another two or three seconds where she didn’t move at all. But then her arms came to wrap around my shoulders in turn, her cheek resting on my forehead as I felt the air escape from her lungs in exhale and her whole body relax in relief—finally, someone knew. Finally, she wasn’t alone. 

There was another hand on my back and soon Mei joined, the same girl group hug we’d do in the bathrooms or after a breakup. The close sisterhood, the love, the caring reminder that we’d all be there for each other. 

Only there was a gap on my left where my best friend should have been. 

We pulled back, Mei murmuring words of encouragement to Cat—though she didn’t seem to be paying attention. At some point she must have felt the press of my cast’s lattice on her because now she was looking down at my right arm like it was an enigma. Something strange and incorrect—and now that I knew she was a Conduit, and she knew I was, too—I realized to her, it was. A broken bone on a Conduit was wrong in her eyes. 

Which is why I avoided them when she looked up at me, instead pulling the sleeve of my jacket further over my arm. 

Mei returned to Brent’s side and tucked herself in as Dom looked down at Cat, a ghost of a smile on his face. “So what is your power, anyways?” He asked her.

Now that there was an alleviation to the tension here, Cat began to tell us all about her power: wax. She wasn’t sure what kind, since it didn’t exactly seem to be something like regular candle wax, but also didn’t seem like tallow or something like beeswax. It’s just…wax, she said with a simple shrug. Burns like it, smells like it, but I can’t tell you how it becomes…different after I drain something to use. 

Brent, who seemed to let go of most of his upset now that he was being involved and informed, asked, “So what, you can drain any wax?”

Cat nodded, adding for emphasis, Why do you think I own so much chapstick? 

That also explained why I caught her eating the end of one in secret in the bathroom one time, though I wasn’t going to mention it. I just thought she really liked cherry flavoring.

Mei looked up at Brent, whose face was beginning to turn pink from exposure to the elements. All those powers and he wasn’t saved from his eczema. “And you’re steel?” She asked. 

Brent seemed a bit proud of the fact when, instead of outright answering, his pink nose dipped lighter and lighter till becoming grey, the color spreading across his face and down his neck as he showed off his steel abilities. 

Cat gasped in surprise as Dom said, “Dude, that’s fucking sick,” with a disbelieving laugh while Mei stood on her toes to reach up and touch a strand of his needle thin, cable-like hair in fascination. I just rolled my eyes. What a show-off.

Okay, that’s way cooler than what I can do, Cat signed, nodding like she was impressed. 

And then she looked at me, and asked the worst thing she possibly could. What can you do with your water powers?

Oh, nothing, bestie! I just get sicker if I use them too often. How the hell was I supposed to get out of this? Especially when Mei settled down on her boots to turn towards me, Dom crossing his arms and doing that lopsided, aloof grin. 

“I—” I stumbled awkwardly. “I mean, nothing like Brent’s steel skin.”

Dom huffed out a chuckle. “Yeah, but you can make a whole whirlpool in the ocean,” he pointed out. “Seriously, that thing was huge. Someone online said it was, like, five stories high.”

“And you did that tidal wave too,” Mei added, too cheerful for the damage that mentioned tsunami caused. I killed hundreds, I ruined Christmas, and she had her eyes alight like it was a sick party trick I pulled at her family’s pool. 

What else can you do? Cat asked, quickly adding, my powers become viscous but not liquid—I’ve always wondered how liquid powers work!

“Yeah, you’ve got to show us something,” Mei agreed, Dom nodding in agreement behind her. 

Oh, god, this could not be happening right now. 

I felt the weight of their gaze, of their expectations; I should’ve been able to show off my power with ease, it should’ve been simple! I could’ve evaporated on the spot or swirled some water around my fingers and call it a day. But I wasn’t even allowed to do that—a fact that I definitely didn’t wanna bring up now. Hey, guys, on top of Tommy and Reese being kidnapped, guess who’s got a failing conduit organ?

I wasn’t gonna say that

So instead I chuckled nervously, saying, “I don’t know, guys—it’s late, those people could still be after us and we really don’t need to be showing off right now—“ 

“Oh come on, Jean!” Mei interrupted, playfully stomping a foot. “I want to see what you can do! There has to be something simple.” 

“I really—“ I struggled to find a new rung on the ladder of bullshit to climb up to try to get out of this. “I’m pretty low on my power, too, I’d rather hold off—“ 

Dom looked at me like I was an idiot. “There’s a lake behind you.” He deadpanned. 

I glanced back at the lake. Right. Shit. 

I looked at Brent, trying to use that twin telepathy people were so sure existed to scream at him get me the hell out of this! but he just stood there with a dumb, deer-in-headlights expression. 

God, brothers are useless. 

Mei was still looking at me in excitement, Dom raising a brow—but it was Cat’s slightly suspicious glare that had me on edge, the stroma seeming to darken a bit like she was looking for a twitch in my facade. Not that she needed one; the proof of my hesitance lay in the arms I crossed, the cast pressing against my chest as a nice, firm reminder of why exactly they were all eyeing me in the silence. 

I was in the middle of debating telling them the truth or doing a little party trick when Dad gave me the grace of a distraction in the noise of a long, drawn out slew of curse words as he hit the hood of Zeke’s van. 

Dad, Dr. Sims, Zeke and Aunt Sia were perched around the hood, watching Dr. Sims as he switched between two of his laptops like a frantic animal trying to find an out—or, in this case, a way in. Into whatever little hole Celia had carved out to lead us to…well, hopefully Reese and Tommy, though at this rate I wasn’t sure what to believe. 

“Your dad really is Delsin Rowe,” Dom repeated his statement from earlier, awe and something akin to distrust in his expression, like he was waiting for Brent and I to yell sike and say this was all a ruse. Neither of us did. “And that’s—that’s Eugene Sims. And you said the other guy was Cole MacGrath’s friend?”

I sighed, just thankful the attention wasn’t on me anymore. “Yeah, that’s Zeke Dunbar,” I said. “He was there when Cole got his powers and all that stuff in Empire City. And Aunt Sia was apparently Dr. Sims’ friend in high school.”

Cat hummed some disbelieving sound. Wow, so you’re connected to everyone from the Seattle Uprisings in some way, she said, looking at me. That must be crazy.

Brent scoffed. “Understatement of the fucking century,” he muttered. 

Mei kept her eyes on Dad, squinting in analysis like she was dissecting him under a microscope. “Who were those people who came to the school?” She asked, finally peeling her eyes from Dad to look between us. 

Brent and I glanced at each other, silently debating whether we should even tell them anything—would it be okay to? Would it be safe to? He raised a brow and I shrugged—they were already involved in some way. It was too late to keep them out of the bullshit that followed our family name. 

Brent gave the smallest nod before looking down at his girlfriend—God, that was still weird to think about, looking at them two so close and not standing on other sides of the group and making googoo eyes at each other—and beginning to explain. “They’re all working for someone Dad knew before. Like, Seattle-before. Some woman that escaped Curdun Cay and gave him a hard time before disappearing.”

“She wants Conduits to be free,” I explained. I had been in her mind, felt that hunger. Her betrayal at the mere idea of letting go of her own freedoms, her powers, to have a chance at Conduits being accepted into society was enough to make her betray Augustine, someone I could feel she had the same love I felt when I was with Dad. “She doesn’t like what’s happening right now and wants it to change, and she’s sure it’s not gonna unless…unless she starts making moves herself.”

If she followed her convictions enough to do that, she was dangerous. 

Dom huffed. “But Conduits are free,” he said, rolling his eyes like it was stupid simple. Like it was obvious. 

He became very sheepish when Brent, Cat and I all turned in place to look at him like he was an idiot. 

“Seriously, dude?” Brent asked, almost offended that he’d even say anything like that.

“What?” He asked, throwing up a hand when he saw how we all were looking at him. “It’s true! Conduits haven’t had to be in Curdun for years now.” 

“Yeah, okay, and there were a hundred years between the slavery being abolished and the Civil Rights act,” Brent pointed out, something Dom scowled at—especially as a Black man. 

“What Brent is saying,” I interrupted before Brent’s deadpanned matter-of-factism could end with a foot in his mouth and a fist in his face. “Is that…well, yeah, we’re out here, but things aren’t exactly going well, you know? They’re trying to force Conduits to sign up in registries and everything.”

There’s a dude running for president this year who’s whole campaign is that we should be locked up like before, Cat added. 

“Or shipped off,” Brent added, crossing his arms. He was all skin once more, but the ends of his hair were going grey the more he thought about it, revealed by his lack of beanie. “Seriously, who the hell thinks bringing segregation back is going to do anything?”

“I don’t know if I would call it segregation when they’re trying to make camps like the ones my hii-oji was sent to when he was a child,” Mei corrected. “They’re talking about that 990-something executive order. That’s internment camps.”

“Not to mention the states that’re requiring ID for Conduits,” Brent added in agreement, looking down at Mei. “They’re trying to make that a federal law. All it’s missing is an arm ba–”

“Alright, I get it, damn,” Dom said, holding up his hands in mock surrender. “I knew things were bad but—I mean, I never really thought that would happen,” He defended. “It—it all sounds so ridiculous that I never thought they’d actually do it, you know?”

I rubbed my own arm; that was fair, I suppose, if this was something that was simply rumor. But there was one issue. “It’s already happening,” I pointed out. Dom was about twenty years too late on hoping it was too insane. 

Because it happened once already. 

Our conversation didn’t get to continue; Dad exclaimed, “Oh thank God,” as he immediately commandeered one of Dr. Sims’ computers from him, scrolling. Zeke disappeared into the driver's side of his van and came out with a yellow notepad and a pen, nodding along as Dad narrated something for him to jot down. They all looked serious, but more so now; instead of being confronted by the puzzle that was getting in, now they were debating some sort of solution to whatever was presenting itself. 

“That seems good,” Brent hummed, looking at me. “Think they finally got an answer?”

“That, or at least something to start with,” I agreed. 

Cat glanced at the group, eyes hovering on Dad before she offhandedly signed, So what happens now? 

I cocked my head to the side. “What do you mean?” 

This, she replied vaguely. This random group that stole Tommy and Theresa, the demands they had for your dad. What happens now?

I hesitated. What did happen now that we were here? Dad seemed fully intent on saving them, and that meant hunting down Celia. Not to mention he looked like he needed no motivation to do that when I told him of the fleeting visions I had of Celia there for every moment. At Mom’s labor, at the marina, there answering a message about me in the back of a van. Regardless of what was going to happen here, he was going to hunt Celia down—Tommy and Reese were just secondary objectives to the real goal. 

“I…guess we try to find where these people took Reese and Tommy,” I said, looking at Cat. “The person Dad’s trying to find leaves behind clues, makes this sort of…a scavenger hunt for him. He’s gotta follow the pieces.”

“Sorry—she kidnapped Theresa and Tommy and is making your dad play hide and seek?” Mei asked, holding up a hand. That same hand tossed up in disbelief. “Who the hell does something like that?”

A monster. 

I watched Dad throw his head back and groan aloud, exhausted from whatever search Celia had him on. Truthfully, we all were tired; I don’t think I got much sleep in the back of the van—at least not anything substantial—and I doubted Dad even slept at all. “She’s using them to get to Dad,” I said, finally answering Mei. “It’s not about finding them, it’s about using them to lead him to her.” I looked between my friends. “And showing him something along the way. Whatever she has to show him is more important than—than the safety of a bunch of kids in school or anything.” 

Cat frowned. That’s insane, she said. Her power could have fried any one of us if she wanted.

Her power? 

Celia’s power was…well, it was paper, which, while it apparently was enough to kill someone by a thousand paper cuts, wasn’t something that could fry someone. Not by a long shot. 

I didn’t get to ask the question, though; instead, off to the side, Aunt Sia asked, “Did you say fried?”

Everyone turned to look at Aunt Sia—she had somehow approached us without a single one realizing in spite of the gravel at our feet that crunched with the slightest shift in posture. I hadn’t realized she was so light on her feet—or maybe that’s a talent she’s kept to herself from her days in Project Sanctuary.

Regardless, she glanced between us all, eyes especially hovering on Dom, Cat and Mei as she said, “I need you all to tell me everything you can about the attack on the school.”

My brow rose. “Is everything okay?”

Aunt Sia weighed her responses in her mind, head tilting back and forth until she found her answer. “Sort of. We need to pinpoint something and I just want to make sure all of our bases are covered, so we’re not missing something crucial.” She crossed her arms. “So I need you three to tell me everything you remember.”

Dom went first. 

Period change between second and third had just happened, and he was still drying off from the showers when he heard screaming in the lockers after gym. Some people from the halls had managed to book it down to the Phys Ed wing and tuck away—he had barely left before he turned back around and hid in the supply closet in the gym with a bunch of other students, herding them in before bracing against the door to make sure it couldn’t swing in. 

Mei seemed more shaken than I originally thought as she started her account; her eyes immediately went downward when Aunt Sia looked at her, and she began to fidget with the bottom hem of her jacket as she recounted how she hid away in the library. She didn’t have much of a plan, she said; she was going to listen out for the attacker and pray she could outmaneuver them by hiding at the ends of the bookshelves. She stumbled through her retelling so much that Brent had to throw an arm around her in support. 

“You were in the library?” I asked. “I thought third period was your Econ class.”

Mei swallowed back whatever bile the thought had brought up. “I, yeah—it is. I was sent to get copies before class started and left to grab a book while Ms. Adler did that for me.”

Aunt Sia kept her steely analytical eyes on Mei for a moment before humming—something Mei said registered in her mind, though she didn’t say anything aloud. 

Cat, though, had it the worst, as she was there the moment they took Tommy. 

We hid in the stairwell, she told us. We didn’t see when they came in but we heard it—they were loud, and there was a lot of banging. Tommy, he—you know he knows what that sounds like, she said, looking between Brent and I so we could vouch for her. He knew it wasn’t guns, but wasn’t sure what it was, so we hid until we could make sense of what was happening. 

Aunt Sia nodded. “Smart,” she murmured. I couldn’t help but agree—Tommy hiding them but keeping them where they could hear what was happening could’ve been the difference between life and death. 

Something he must’ve carried within himself from last time.

We were hiding, waiting to see if we needed to go into the science wing or run downstairs, when we heard the woman tell the others to look for him, she said, eyes faraway. Another person that mattered to me, another haunted look. I kept telling him we needed to go, we needed to hide, but he wouldn’t move. At first I was worried he was frozen, you know, because of his PTSD—but after a moment when we heard more—more crashes and screaming, he stood and told me to go hide. 

Brent blinked. “He gave himself up?” He asked incredulously. 

Cat nodded. He did, she said. I tried to stop him, tried to tell him that it was dangerous, but he said he didn’t want anything worse to happen because of him. Cat looked down at the gravel, shoulders sagging with the weight of what happened—and the subsequent choices she made. I didn’t…I watched him go down the stairs, and a few seconds later, heard him call out to the people. He told them his name, and said that he was there, so they could leave. He was demanding they leave. I didn’t know they already had Theresa until I heard him say her name and ask them to not hurt her. That’s when I finally moved to peek over the third floor breezeway and watched them be dragged away. She chewed on her inner cheek, eyes brimming with tears in the pale moonlight. I just watched them get carried away and I…I froze. I did nothing. I should have done something.

My heart broke, the shatter making me take a step forward. “Kitty, no, you couldn’t have done—”

I should have done something, she insisted with a huff through her nose, the movements of her signing firm enough to enunciate even through the language barrier. I have powers, I could have done something! Instead I froze and let those assholes take my cousin, she threw a hand up in punctuation. 

Brent started to speak, “Cat, you did what was best—” before he was interrupted by Aunt Sia. 

“It’s traumatizing, watching someone you care about get taken away like that,” she said empathetically, taking a step forward. “You sort of…spiral, and begin to think about things that could’ve been different. You could’ve said something different, or insisted hard enough, or if you had just convinced them to go somewhere that, in hindsight, would’ve been the perfect hiding spot—”

She cut off, throwing a glance back over her shoulder, eyes hovering on her best friend, Dr. Sims. All this chaos, and I forgot she knew Dr. Sims before he even developed powers; was she there the day he did? Was she there the day he was taken? 

She righted her eyes once more, a hand going over her leather-wrapped heart. “I get it, okay? And I need you to understand there is nothing you could have done to change this. Realistically, the people that attacked your school would have kept attacking, if they stayed. They would’ve kept searching for him, and—well, there’s a chance your cousin saved lives by giving himself up, including yours. Definitely yours, if you had made your power known at all. We still don’t know a lot about Archangel, but we know enough about its leader to know it would’ve ended badly for you if you intervened.

“And we’re not going to stop until we find him, okay? That’s why I need you to tell me everything that happened.” She lowered her hand from her heart, letting Cat take a moment to calm herself before asking, “What happened after you raised yourself enough to see them taking your friends?”

Cat inhaled deeply before raising her hands.  I didn’t actually move until I heard the woman yell about leaving, that they had ‘their targets.’ They dragged Tommy and Theresa through the front gate. The woman who was telling everyone what to do was on the second story breezeway across from me—

Aunt Sia immediately straightened at that. “You saw the woman?” She asked. “Can you tell me more about her?” This was different; seeing someone use a power was one thing, sure, but the woman who outright threatened Dad with that message on the courtyard being seen? Maybe we could use that. We could confirm it was Celia. 

She was blonde, Cat said. Had a hat on, one of those….I can only describe it as French? What are those called—

“Beret?” Mei asked. 

Cat nodded. Yeah, kind of like those. More slouchy. She had a brown coat, a long one, scarf around her neck. The weird thing though was that she was hard to look at. Like, she was surrounded by this light that was way too bright.

I looked at Aunt Sia, who was already looking at me like she was waiting for confirmation from someone else, someone that knew…“That’s not Celia,” I said.

She nodded in thought, hand absentmindedly fiddling with her braid. “It’s not,” she agreed. 

Brent sighed hard. “So there’s more than just the crazy suicidal lady,” he said, pinching the bridge of his nose. 

Dom’s eyes widened—for someone who was usually aloof, he was quick to figure things out when he was paying attention. “Wait, so—the person you all were sure had something to do with this, that woman’s not her?”

Aunt Sia held up a placating hand. “We know she’s still involved,” she reassured him—especially when his words seemed to make Cat’s hackles raise in alarm.  “She’s the cause of this in some capacity. More than likely, she sent someone trusted to kidnap your friends.”

Okay, but who? Cat demanded. If you guys don’t know who took my cousin, then how are you even supposed to find him? Or Theresa?

Aunt Sia watched Cat’s hands for a moment, that hand on her own braid paused as I watched her eyes seemingly flash in the moonlight as the thoughts behind them ran like pistons, trying to connect dots. 

Which is why it was no surprise when Aunt Sia, instead of continuing to calm everyone down, asked, “What else happened?” 

Cat blinked, looking at Aunt Sia like she hadn’t heard her correctly at first—but something settled in the fugue of her panic and she exhaled shakily, raising her hands once more. She was—I told you she was on the second balcony, right? She asked, everyone nodding in confirmation. Okay. She was there, and that weird light around her flashed and she disappeared. I didn’t realize she was on the rooftop until there was a huge light ray that was carving that message into the courtyard.

Mei was the first to voice it. “She teleported?” She asked, looking up at Brent. “Conduits can teleport?” 

“Not usually. Not unless their power allows it.” Aunt Sia answered instead. 

Cat, though, shook her head. I wouldn’t say she teleported. Well, she sorta did, but it wasn’t just her disappearing. It was the bright light–like you said, her power. She had someone standing beside her on the rooftop, a man, and once she was done with the message, instead of disappearing, there was this weird… 

Cat struggled to find the word, instead taking a moment to broaden in a wide circle with her hands before going back to signing. This huge circle was behind her. Blue. It appeared behind them when they were talking and then they turned and walked into it and disappeared. 

Blue circle. 

My eyes traveled away from the group, looking out at the gray lake in the pale moonlight, and suddenly I was there, back in the Puget Sound watching something on the other end of the waters widen further and further until those soldiers came out of it, ice at their fingertips. The same person that attacked the school, took Tommy and Theresa, was the same person who helped Augustine and those soldiers attack the Akomish reservation. 

Attacked me. 

Nearly killed me. 

I had really only used it once, but I became very used to the idea that I could breathe underwater. Especially after the first time I used the ability, when everything seemed so peaceful and bright and exciting. But now? I was reminded of what it felt like to drown. Between the numbers and the abilities, I felt like we were all in over our heads. Because if they could kidnap me, Tommy and Reese, if they could bomb COLE, if they could nearly kill me….

What else could they do?

Aunt Sia’s voice brought me back to the current conversation, asking, “Did you happen to hear any of their conversation before she disappeared? Anything about a location, or somewhere to fall back to?” Cat shook her head, and Aunt Sia tried her best to not seem disappointed. “Thank you for telling me all of this,” she said instead with that gently placating sincerity in her tone that always brought a bit of calm to you when you were upset, like a mother’s gentle hum. She smiled, though the action seemed a bit stressed, and then turned to leave, heading back towards the others by the van. 

We watched her leave in silence, everyone paused with bated breath like they were scared to be the first to break it—though mine wasn’t out of fear. I waited until Aunt Sia was far out of hearing range before turning to look at Cat. “The portal—did it look like those solar flares that come off of the sun?” I asked. “Sorta wispy, a bit purple at the edges?”

She blinked, surprised I even knew that, before nodding. It did. How do you—

I turned before she even finished the question to head towards Dad. 

I held up a hand, signaling for them to just wait a minute when Brent asked me what the hell I was doing as I was two steps behind Aunt Sia. Zeke was looking down at the long list on his notepad as Dr. Sims was trying to calm Dad down, a placating hand out. 

Not that it was doing much. I caught the tail end of Dad’s rant the closer we approached: “—impossible to figure this out without it taking days,” he insisted, hand running through his hair. That same hand motioned off both abruptly and vaguely as he added, “Those kids don’t have that sort of time!”

“They’ve put up a ton of firewalls and heuristic scans,” Dr. Sims told Dad. “I can try to use a recursive backdoor exploit, but I’d have to map out the subnet first. It’ll take some time—”

“We don’t have time,” Dad stressed again, a bit more forceful. 

Aunt Sia finally joined the group, starting with, “I don’t think anything they told me will help—” before a particular patch of gravel crunched under my feet and they all paused to look up and see who was approaching—something Dad especially didn’t seem to want to deal as he sighed, trying to keep his tone level to keep me from worrying, like he always did. And always failed to. “Jean, go—go hang out with your friends for a while while we figure this out—”

“The person that attacked the school helped attack Salmon Bay,” I said, getting straight to the point. “And I don’t think it’s Celia.”

That at least got his attention. 

Aunt Sia told the men what Cat had explained to her, and I waited till the end of the conversation to add that those portals were near-exactly like what I saw when I was fighting Augustine in the Puget Sound. By the time I was done, Zeke was nodding slowly while Dad stared off at the paint of the van, Dr. Sims too busy typing to really commit to a look of thoughtfulness. 

“So that confirms it,” Zeke said, looking at Dad. “Celia’s got a second-in-command.”

Dad hummed—or, it sounded more like a badly disguised groan—while he chewed on his inner cheek. “One that’s doing the dirty work while she works behind the scenes,” he huffed. “Glad to see not much has changed.”

“Whoever it is, Celia trusts,” Aunt Sia said. 

“And that’s hard to come by,” Dr. Sims added. “I’ll look into finding local footage, see if we can get a start on figuring out who this person is.” He was typing like a madman on his computer, not even pausing in the strikes as he looked up at Aunt Sia. “But we don’t know where they could have gone?”

Aunt Sia shook her head. “No,” she confirmed. “The tall one, D….Don?” She asked, looking at me. 

“Dom,” I told her. I tacked on uselessly, “Short for Dominic.”

“Dom—he was in the lockers,” she told Dad. “Brent’s girlfriend says she was in the library, and while Tommy’s cousin could see him being taken away, she didn’t hear anything that’d help us.”

Dad groaned. “So we’re no closer to finding out which one of these places they could be.”

I cocked my head. “What do you mean?”

There was this brief moment where Dad looked at me, opened his mouth, and I could practically see the insistence that I not worry about it on the edge of his chapped lips—but then he froze. He paused, snapped his mouth shut, and after a beat, the insistence floated away on the frosted air of his exhale. “We’re having trouble finding where your friends are,” he admitted. 

The chill that ran down my spine had nothing to do with the winter air. “What? What do you mean?”

“I mean,” he said, moving to lean against the grill of the van, “That I think Celia had this all planned to where I was supposed to use the mobile command center, to directly access their records. But since your friend triggered the alarms, it shut everything down.”

My chest felt like lead. “So you…you have no idea where they are?”

Zeke held up a hand. “We’ve got some ideas,” he reassured me, motioning towards the hood of the van where the dove lay unfolded and on its front, revealing the letter Celia wrote Dad. “We figured the crazy lady is using some sort of old DUP facility based on the letter, and Eugene managed to use the old DUP stuff he had to pinpoint a secret file of locations. But it’s not exactly a short list,” he said, flipping his hand to show me the other side of the pad. 

Oh, that was….a lot of locations. 

‘Locations’ was a loose term. Some were obvious—Curdun Cay, stations in other cities. The big major holding cell on the East Coast that was destroyed a while ago in a hurricane. But there were a lot of other things, words and phrases and even simple acronyms that just didn’t make sense, things only those that’ve worked with the DUP in the past would’ve even had a chance at cracking. Lowcountry. ABDA. Newbrant, Chilling, JST, Purcell, Fa—

Purcell. 

Zeke kept talking, but it didn’t really register to my ears; that one word seemed to peel off of the pad and float in my vision, the word repeated again and again in my head but not my tone of voice. No, the voice was more authoritative, cooler and firmer like the concrete she had wielded. 

“Which is why I’m giving approval for the detainee to be sent to our research facility in Purcell. If we can find a way to harness that ability? The DUP would never fall.”

“—trying our best to find them—” Dad said when I came back to earth, taking my silence for fear and rushing to reassure me. Instead, I interrupted him. 

“It’s Purcell.”

Dad faltered as everyone else raised their heads to look at me, confusion on their faces. “What?”

I tried to keep up with my thoughts and outline them in a way that would make sense, despite how insane it all seemed—but I told Dad the story once and I assumed he told the others, considering they were still here. “I—when Garrett was showing me things, the memories they had of what Celia had shown them—there was the moment Celia defected. Augustine was telling her about this—this Conduit that she found that could ‘negate’ another Conduit’s powers if he was near them. She sent the Conduit to this place called Purcell to find a power to go with his ability so that she could use it to turn off Conduits so they could ‘reenter’ society. It’s why Celia left her, Dad.” I told him, watching his eyes widen with every word. All I told him, and somehow I missed telling him all this to instead inform him about what Celia did to Mom. “They wanted to give this Conduit a physical power to make the implants like Garrett had actually work, so Conduits didn’t have powers and could live in society. And Celia didn’t like that, so she left Augustine alone when you fought her in the Sea6News tower.”

Zeke slowly lowered the notepad as I rambled on, glancing to meet Dad’s eyes when I paused. “If Dr. Hutch was correct and the signatures on Garrett and Jean matched—” He began.

“That means they found a compatible power,” Dad finished in agreement. “Probably sped everything up that they could while we were all on trial, threw the implant in Garrett as a minimum, and Celia managed to recruit them after the DUP lost all funding a year later.” He spun around, zeroing in on Dr. Sims. “Do you know if they found this Purcell place like the others?” 

“I can look,” Dr. Sims acquiesced, moving to the passenger’s side door of the van to grab another one of his laptops. He booted it up, moving to go through the plethora of file’s he had stored on it and began working away. 

Meanwhile, Dad had gone digging for his phone in his pocket as Aunt Sia moved to give Dr. Sims room to work, settling in beside Dad and putting a hand on his arm. “Do you want me to go get a description of the man with Celia’s lieutenant? He might be the tar Conduit,” she said, keeping her voice low. 

Dad nodded absentmindedly, only glancing up to watch her leave before beginning to type away at his phone. Dr. Sims shifted to another computer and we all fell into silence for a bit as he worked until he said, “I’m not pulling up anything with the Purcell moniker. Maybe it went by another name? But we don’t even know what Purcell means.”

Zeke was scribbling on the notepad in his hands now, frowning. “Purcell,” he hummed, like he was testing out the word. “Ain’t that some sort of mountain?”

“It’s either a mountain range, or a composer,” Dad quipped, scrolling past the latter to click on a wikipedia link for the former. “‘The Purcell Mountains are a mountain range in southeastern British Columbia.’” He read off of the screen before looking up. “How the hell are we supposed to get to British Columbia?” 

“Assuming it has anything to do with the area,” Dr. Sims added offhandedly. 

“I might still have some contacts,” Aunt Sia returned, moving to stand beside Dr. Sims. She motioned for the note pad Zeke had and flipped to the next page, beginning to make her own notes. “I had a lot of different ways of getting Conduits into Canada—there has to be something I can still do.” She jotted down something before holding it out for Dad to take. “This is what Jean’s friend remembers of the lieutenant and the man with her.”

She silently held out her other hand and the two traded, Dad reading her notes as she began to search for a way into Canada via Maps instead. “Blonde…short build with a skirt…man with brown buzzed hair,” he huffed, looking up at Aunt Sia with a raised brow. “The woman was ‘surrounded by light?’”

Aunt Sia shrugged. “That’s what she said,” she defended. “That she seemed to be surrounded by some kind of shifting light source.”

Dad seemed to watch Sia’s face for a lie before sighing hard, holding the notepad out for Zeke to take back. “I don’t know these people,” he said. “They don’t ring a bell at least.”

Dr. Sims sighed. “I don’t have a lead on this Purcell place,” he said. “Which, on one hand, means the lab was never found and is probably where Celia is stationed. But we don’t have a direct location. If we continue with the assumption that ‘Purcell’ means this mountain range, it’s still a mountain range. That’s a wide area to search. If we make it up to Canada, I can deploy some angels, try to zero in on it based on activity—especially any kind of radio waves—but I’d need time to pinpoint—”

Dad groaned, letting his head fall back. “We don’t have time to search a whole mountain range. Those kids don’t have time.”

I tried to swallow but my mouth was too dry; there it was again. Dad’s urgent insistence that we were running out of time, that Tommy and Reese were running out of time. They were in danger, that much I knew, but Dad was so sure that something horrible was going to happen. That spark of anxiety behind his eyes?

He was scared of them dying. 

And that terrified me, because I knew the idea wasn’t above the realm of possibilities where Celia was involved. 

I glanced back at my friends, the ones from my group remaining; Cat had cracked under her own worry and began to pace, Dom and Mei watching her footsteps with concern. Brent’s eyes met mine and he just barely raised his brows, asking for an answer I didn’t have. Was this what it felt like, to be Dad? To see all the people you cared about stressed and have no way to fix it? No answers, no ideas. No location to a place my best friend was dragged to and no idea if we could even get there. Sure, we had an idea, a concept of a possibility of an answer. A mountain range that, in the conversation Dad, Dr. Sims and Zeke were currently having, was 300 miles wide and nearly triple that in height. It would take forever to search the area, far longer than we had to spare. This wasn’t something we could solve with an address and Google Maps—hell, I couldn’t even do what Mei did and stalk a bitmoji on the prayer that I’d even be able to find her—

Wait. 

Wait. 

My eyes widened and I broke away from Brent’s stare to fumble in my pocket for my phone, managing to drop it in the process. The crunch from my phone hitting gravel grabbed everyone’s attention and I suddenly felt a dozen eyes on me as Dad asked, “You alright?”

I didn’t respond, not yet; there was some terrible part of me that was terrified that this wouldn’t work. That somehow the time away had taken away from the life I knew had taken this too. Not to mention my last phone took a swim in the Sound. 

But for once in my goddamn life, I was lucky; I signed into my phone’s account that turned it from a burner into mine, and with it came the influx of everything else that belonged to me. The missed calls, the plethora of voicemails. The previews to emails with accusations that felt like they stabbed me in my chest even as I swiped them away. 

None of that mattered right now. Not when I could possibly help.

The gravel shifted beside me as Dad walked over to join me as I clicked through apps and opened the one I was looking for, cursing at how long it took to load in this area with terrible reception. I smacked the screen of the phone and it prompted Dad to ask again, “Jean, what are you doing?”

But just then, the location map of the Find My Phone app loaded, and oh, how I could’ve cried; every desperate search for my missing phone, every joking message I’d send to her when she was off doing something far from home, all led to a circular dot I centered in the screen, Reese’s last location pinged somewhere in Canada. 

I held up my phone, screen facing outward. “Would you be able to figure out where she is with this?” I asked Dr. Sims. 

He cocked his head. “What is that?”

Dad stepped forward, motioning for me to hand my phone over as he huffed—despite the stress of it all, he almost seemed amused. “Find My Phone, saving the day again,” he murmured as he turned around, walking to Dr. Sims’ side. “Last online yesterday. What’s the likelihood that that was her phone dying?” 

Dr. Sims took my phone, holding it in one hand as his other reached out to the map on his mini-computer and using the touch screen to zoom in. “It looks like it’s here,” he said, motioning to the screen. “Eyebrow Peak, or around that area.”

Dad sighed. “So we’re definitely going to Canada,” he said, rubbing the overgrown stubble that had turned scruff on his jawline. “Alessia—”

“Already on it,” she said, motioning for Zeke to follow her. “Mind helping?”

“Sure,” Zeke said, pushing off of the side of his van. “Think I’ve got some old favors I could try calling in.”

They left as Dr. Sims muttered something to Dad, who nodded before turning to face me. “We’ll give you your phone back when we get what we need off of it, okay?” He asked me. 

He looked so tired; I hadn’t realized his eyebags had gotten so dark until they were illuminated by the moonlight, nearly black, and with his unkempt beard and hair that had turned tangled with how many times he’s run his hands through it…he just looked haggard. 

I recognized the dismissal. His statement had an unsaid ending, go somewhere until we’re done, an expectation to let them do what they needed to do. But between the way his shoulders sagged and the tension in my own, I couldn’t do it. Not yet. Instead I stepped forward and wrapped my arms around him in a much-needed hug. 

He froze—for someone who looked so run down, his lower back sure was stiff—but then his arm came around to hold me, hand rubbing across that spot in my back that was now becoming sore to the touch. There was a softness to the movement and the way he subsequently melted, like he too needed this small moment.

And for a blissful two minutes, we were given a reprieve. 

At least until somewhere by the lake’s shoreline, Aunt Sia called, “Delsin! I think I have a way there!”

Dad sighed, patting my back—and as I looked up at him, he managed to give me a genuine—albeit tired—smile. “Let’s go get your friends back,” he murmured.