PETRICHOR

If it was up to Juniper, Robyn would still be in Purgatory. It was an awful place, somewhere that she shouldn’t have wished upon her worst enemy, but in her worst moments, Juniper found herself wishing they had been able to leave Robyn behind. It was just too bad she was a sucker for her little brother. If he said ‘jump’, Juniper would have asked 'how high?’ Unfortunately, he hadn’t said to jump. He’d said to bring Robyn.

“Oh, bloody hell. Not you.” Upon seeing her, Juniper had forgotten what she had even wandered to get from the supply closet. She stood dumbfounded, like she had lag, glancing around like someone who’d gone into the fridge to get a snack and didn’t know what they wanted. “I know it’s a big supply closet, but do you really think it’s big enough for the both of us?” She tutted to herself, half-joking and half-not before seeming to remember that she had come in here to stock up on toilet paper for her room.

“Ah.” She took another step into the room, foot catching on the box that had been propping open the door and sending it flying. “Buggering-fucking-bastard-bitch.” She unleashed a string of curse words that all melded together like one long word, but it was almost as if she was used to this type of thing happening. She straightened up, picked up the box and turned to leave with the toilet paper, and wished she’d said even more curse words.

The door wouldn’t budge. “Um…” She huffed, pushing it a bit harder. “What did you do?”

She’d uncovered an artifact of the same gold-yellow tucked in the deepest pocket of her vest. Innocuous in its thin plastic casing, one man’s trash had repurposed itself as her treasure. Cursed, she’d thought, when no one passed along her self-made cleaning route would tell her its use. But after enduring a couple hours of Robyn’s chatter, her friend Cairo had explained it was a “kazoo,” and wow, was its song beautiful! Such a marvelous instrument deserved to be heard by the world - toot toots and doot doots the constant cadence of her new, one hero orchestra. Even the supply closet, where she’d come to set down her mop and bucket, overflowed with splendid noise.

“Oh, hi, Juniper,” Robyn greeted, playing a lick on her kazoo for the other’s ear. “Be careful around that box, the door-” she tried, but Juniper had already tripped over its cardboard, “-locks externally.” She fiddled with her hands. “So until someone opens it, we’re stuck.” Robyn set her mop down, taking a seat, back leaned up against a shelf, her legs outstretched on the ground. She cast her gaze down, fingers digging at a crack in the floor. “You, um, you don’t like me much, do you?” She managed, after a wide berth of silence, forcing a smile. Even outside Purgatory’s walls, Juniper’s presence seemed to sap the air out of her. “I know not everyone can, I just…did I do something? And if I did, I can fix it, I can…try. That’s what a hero would do.”

Her surroundings wearied her most at the end of the day. The knowledge of her friends’ existence soothed her soul, but at the end of the day, even in Purgatory, all Alyx wanted to do was curl up with a report on Syringammina fragilissima on Nuddra. She was starved for science, for intellectual learning, and she could feel the rust, the cobwebs growing on her brain. However, science or no science, she still had to eat, and as her work day grew to an end she slipped into the stream of people heading towards the canteen.

Food acquired, Alyx analyzed the room with her eyes, spotting predators and prey – apt descriptions in Purgatory even as they usually applied only to wild animals. There. Not a seat near any of her friends, but a seat that was safe, though it was entirely possible she’d lose her ears to Robyn’s chatter. Still, the other was as nonthreatening as a person could be (Alyx often wondered exactly how she’d ended up in prison, of all places) and so Alyx would survive another meal without fear for her life.

And so she wove her way through the tables, careful to give some a wide berth, while aware that others were safe to pass by so long as no eye contact was made. Robyn’s table was empty, save for her, and Alyx as placed her tray across from the other, she smiled tentatively, hoping the other wouldn’t take it as an invitation to begin conversation, and began to eat.

Robyn pushed her slop around with a plastic fork, searching for signs of dehydrated life. Sometimes, a salty clump masquerading as a corn kernel would emerge, a lump disguised as a slippery chunk of mushroom. Today's meal held no mysteries. But across, seating herself at the table, a new member of the cleaning staff, a tentative friend. Ah - wow! What could be learned of Alyx Wen? Given the three traits Robyn had picked up from observation on shared shifts (soft-spoken, serious, graceful), well, everything. She let the woman take a few bites before scooting next to her with a large-mouthed grin. "What do you think of the food today, friend?" Robyn asked, chowing down on grey stew. "And Purgatory, the cleaning team...everything! I know it's not much, but at least for me, it's going to be home for a while, so looking up always keeps me up and going."

‘Be careful of that Kane kid,’ they used to say. 'She’s bad news.’ It shouldn’t have been a surprise, given the reputation Robyn’s mother had. She was a cold-blooded murderer, they used to say, and Robin was well on her way to becoming just like her. A rebel. Juniper could hardly judge someone for being a killer these days. Her rifle had plenty of notches on it, but she would judge someone for being a rebel. Even after signing her soul over to them, Juniper still hated them. In fact, them owning her soul probably made her hate them even more. Sour grapes upon sour grapes.

Disliking Robyn wasn’t a surprise. What surprised Juniper was seeing Robin in the same prison, hearing her name on Gideon’s lips. Juniper was already in a bad mood that day, having tripped over one of the fellow in-mates mop buckets while they’d been cleaning the hallway outside the cells, busting her knee, then being dragged up by her collar by one of the guards and told to re-do the job herself. Knowing that Robyn was just a few feet away, taking some poor naive in-mates on a grand made-up adventure complete with her acting out parts with her hands… Well, that only made her mood even worse.

She tolerated it. For a while. Not a very long while, but a while at least. Eventually though, Juniper looked up from the slop on her plate and piped up. “How many overwatch officers did you say it was? Fifteen? Twenty?” She shrugged, letting her spoon fall back into what definitely wasn’t mashed potatoes no matter what the menu had said. “Funny, when I saw it on the news it said you were easy to apprehend.”

Robyn set her tray down, lips quirking upward as she found a crowd already drawn around her table. “Tell us a story, Robyn!” “Yeah, c'mon!” “I stayed on my best behavior in Alpha just so I could get out and hear about your arrest again!” She grinned up at the last inmate, pride bubbling to her cheeks. These stories, fabricated as they were, seemed to inspire the best in others - they’d lend a hand to each other at work, talk their rage down instead of taking it out on guards or prisoners. She believed in them, and they believed in her tales because if they didn’t, doubt would crumble the imagined sandcastle that someone like them, that even they, could be heroes too.

“It was a lonesome night. Dark, no people or stars to be seen,” she began, whisking wide-eyed prisoners through a train chase, letting them stand beside her as she kept eight train cars from falling with her bare hands. Dead ends, tunnels of twists and turns…eventually, they wound up back at the nutripowder factory, their hands up, completely surrounded, before a dissenting voice from a nearby table shoved them back between concrete walls. “Believe it or not, it was fifty,” Robyn replied, scooting over so the newcomer could share her seat. They’d covered her on the news? Awful things, probably - like mother, like child, beaks that'd pecked at her until it was hard to stand. Robyn’s lungs tightened. “That’s what they want you to believe,” she managed, shooting a conspiratorial wink towards the other. “Imagine how bad it’d look to know the Councils’ forces were almost bested by some twerp. You got any other rumors for me to dispel while you’re at it, or…?”

date & time : january 23rd, 7:00pm  location : purgatory, the kitchens status : with @robyn-kane

Cairo was never the sort of woman to do things indelicately.

Even now, standing before the mouth of Purgatory’s massive kitchen sink, the bubbles that foamed there made a delicate cushion around the dirty dishes and silverware. Any other kitchen hand would have made the soap monstrous, lathered into a mountain, threatening to drip from every edge (it’s how her blonde, pig-mouthed supervisor had shown her how). But even this was art she’d learned. The bubbles glinted in the dim light, layered atop each other, shouldered their round cousins to either side; eventually, she had a wet chrysanthemum staring back at her. Cairo pulled a bowl from her pile of filth and worked a sponge around the rim. Grey sludge softened and fell, plopped into the water, spun down the drain. 

If she was anywhere else, Cairo thought she might have been humming to herself. Even singing. She knew if she made a sound here, though, it could have been too nostalgic to bear. It would have conjured up a dangerous illusion of hope. 

So she washed her dishes — hair pinned tight against her skull, sleeves rolled high above her elbows — and tried very hard not to imagine herself in the Concord. It wasn’t long ago she’d been afforded this privilege, of privacy. At first, she thought she’d like it. You got accustomed to the endless energy of Purgatory — to everything loud, in constant motion and color even at night when nobody really slept. Not really. Perhaps a break from that would be a breath of air. Maybe she’d be able to really think. She hadn’t taken into account that this would be the first time in months she’d be alone. 

There were no devils in her ear now, no scraping plates or chatter; just the sound of her sink, filling and draining, filling and draining, her heartbeat, and her breath catching in her throat. But that was stupid! This wasn’t a time for mourning, for that raw feeling like a gutted fish.

She hadn’t lost yet. 

Right?

Cairo’s grip tightened on the sink’s metal lip. She brought an arm up to her brimming eyes and left a streak of soap there. 

The door opened and Cairo reached instinctively for a grimy spoon. What she was going to do with it was beyond her, but she turned swiftly to face her intruder, eyes aflame, spoon drawn. But when she saw Robyn, mop in hand — Robyn who had always offered her crooked smiles and tall tales but never any harm — Cairo let herself breathe and lowered the spoon. She slumped against the sink and sniffled. 

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I bet you’re getting really tired of me doing that… There’s a blue bucket by the wall over there. You can sit on it and tell me one of your stories. Tell me again, was it Ailea’s moon you visited? Or Brora’s?”  

Purgatory seemed a crucible that hardened dirt like cooling lava, pressure and heat compacting murk into scabrous swaths. With it came a persistent crunch under inmate footprints, heightening the swish of mops, the rattle of bars, the animal sounds that filed through hallways in unsteady lines. Such was the essence of captivity - a reduction of people to their rawest parts. How much hurt could they take before their humanity left them? How much work? How much violence? How much shame? Just the other day, Robyn had passed a guard who reeked of loneliness, seen a blanket of fear cocoon a woman, metamorphosing her back into a girl. Feral instinct was an exoskeleton worn by people forced to live underground like insects, homogenizing them more than any uniform. But chip away at their layers and find dignity. Strain their tears and find hands cupped with the purest spring water. Scrub away all their anguish, their anger, and find names buried under numbers systems had raveled over skin. 

Hold them. 

Remember them. 

And know this was the first step towards mending.

Robyn wiped her forehead. A bead of sweat bloomed on her sleeve, sticky and warm as a young heart. The canteen, while caked in grime hours earlier, seemed to sparkle as much as anything could behind these walls, and mountains of trash found themselves gathered neatly in bags. "Why do you do it?" Inmates asked, guards wordlessly beside them. "Day after day, if it just gets dirty again?" Custodial tasks seemed busywork to those who hadn't spent their lives pursuing them, but to Robyn, they meant the difference between hope and abandon. Anything, given enough mettle, could be breathed life into. Anything, given enough effort, could be made anew. And so this place of convergence found itself clean after every meal, labor she hoped would reconvince people of their humanity. Because this was her life now. This was her finest heroic mission. And despite want, despite dreams that'd only actualize in false memory, her minnow heart continued to lash its tail against the current, beat her lungs through the relentless task of swimming upstream.

Her hands clutched the life raft of the kitchen door and pushed it inward. No sooner did its tired groan cart her in, though, did she find a spoon angled at her chest, a chef's saber that threatened to skewer her - still wriggling - and roast her on a spit. But the weapon lowered as Cairo's eyes flickered with remembrance, and Robyn bounded towards the sink as she was welcomed inward. 

"Don't worry about it. My mop lance would have totally beaten your spoon sword, anyway." She cast down her equipment, flexing an arm before catching sight of the suds streaking the woman's face. A slump. A sniffle. And yet here Cairo was, still strong enough to extend kindness.

"Brora's," Robyn replied, her voice soft, pulling the bucket out only to offer it to the other. A wistful smile graced her face, suds multiplying as she scrubbed slime off of dishes. "God, you should've seen it, Cairo - all those colors - sunsets like you've never seen. When we get out of here, I'll take you up. We could go anywhere, see anything, taste the universe on our tongues." She slowed her washing, hope mixing in with the pain of never knowing. Hunger gripped her, cast her gaze to the ceiling, threatened to spill need from a clenched fist. "If you could, uh...if you could eat anything...what would it be? What does it taste like? And do you find it on a moon or on a planet or in the ground or, uh....?” 

Eretreia learned many moons ago that the only way to survive a cage is to get to know it – know every single person that inhabits it, every corner and what it hides, how the hours work around a place where the sun doesn’t shine. Her back still hurt from the scars barely starting to heal, memories of what happened on Level Alpha being held close beneath her tongue but never leaving it to utter. Certain horrors were her own, and this was another one to add to her treasury of secrets.

Beta was different; the guards at the corners were more relaxed, the weapons on their holsters less heavy, their shoulders more relaxed. Sitting at the corner table, Eretreia couldn’t help but smile, a feline smirk that could only indicate trouble. They had not break her completely. From the corner of her eye, she felt someone approaching and, with a reflex she would likely never lose, she reached out to her ankle, hoping to find her dagger before realising it was pointless, her ankle nothing but bare, no weapon in sight. Instead, she reached for her fork (plastic, barely lethal, if not in her hands) and pointed it at the individual’s throat. “What are you doing?” she asked, teeth showing.

A wave of cheer spread through her as she found the canteen rife with chatter. It was, in many ways, the best part of this not so bad prison. Fellow inmates bustled about with a myriad of expressions, some kind, raising a hand as she waved at them, though as her eyes caught sight of a lonesome woman at a corner table, it seemed kindest to forego familiarity and sit with someone new. Arrival proved a fork aimed at her throat. But such fright-induced threats found their way to her on the daily, so Robyn hopped back, lowering her mouth towards the morsel still clinging to the weapon, fork prongs snapping in her jaws as she retreated. "Well,” she began, “at first, I was just going to ask if I could sit, but now I'm checking for poison." She raised a finger, mulling the taste over before spitting four sharp pieces of plastic down into a napkin. "Civic duty, you know. A hero’s work is never done, but you'll be happy to know your food's one-hundred-percent safe for your enjoyment and consumption."

                                             file: introduction

full name: robyn kane age: 27 identifies with: state of dreaming by marina and the diamonds genesis: organic gender: intersex + female identifying (she/her) portrayal: chloe bennet

                                                                   file: biography

TW: Guns, hospitals. blood, death

Robyn Kane dreamed of mangoes.

Sweet, sap-fleshed fruits she could describe in such vivid detail you could feel their gold-yellow dripping down your throat. They had, Atticus rationalized, been her mother’s last meal request; three mangoes, halved, (pits still in, please!) cubed at about one inch in diameter. Such a tremendous yearning this must’ve been that it found its way to her daughter, who in turn ate up washers and packing peanuts, swallowed down marbles and screws in her futile pursuit of sweetness. “Normal toddler behavior,” articles on his armlet read. “Just whack ‘em hard on the back if you see ‘em gulping away anything important.” Of course, Atticus never whacked Robyn, but the idea of normality washed relief over the father. “Still,” a voice nagged, often late, often red-eyed on the pull-out couch of their rusted apartment. “What could be said of the planets?”

Well, for one, they were huge! Vast, sweeping expanses Robyn dreamed up with forests high as the SungX building and deserts red as the setting sun. Sands that stung in sporadic blizzards. Skybirds who soared over archipelagos in triangular formations, fighting fish over seafoam, their hunger a constant, bitter pang. Such were the untrekked settings that congregated heroes to Robyn’s stories, that in turn congregated ruddy-faced factory cleaning kids, their stinking mops forgotten, around her during their glorious hour of lunch break. “Pew pew pew!” Robyn would say, her small voice teeming with life, “and then the heroes and the villains became best friends, and no one’s mom had to die, and the planets weren’t lonely for anyone, anymore. I accept tips via my dad’s credit account or in mangoes. The end.” And then, in the same tidy fashion as always, everyone would pack up and get back to scrubbing floors.

The crowds dwindled after parents caught word. Scrap metal never fell far from the ship, people said, and everyone and their android knew that Kane kid was going to turn out bad. That monster - Clemence Kane’s - child had those same foxlike eyes, lips the same raw swath of ochre…a gaze that flickered time to time with the same strange, insatiable hunger. “Stay away from that Kane kid,” workers warned, their fingers shaking, their grey uniforms all the same. Fathers cursed and flicked cigarette butts. Mothers pulled their children to the other side of the litter-caked road. And so the crowd on the back steps of nutripowder factory, which had once overflowed like steel wool from a storm cloud, shrunk to the size of one lonely droplet.

Robyn kept herself steady by looking upwards. She’d work hard, she’d be so helpful they’d all have to come around. Tears found it harder to squeeze by when her face was lifted towards the ceiling, and muscle memory kept her mouth pulled into the same sweet, little grin. At lunch, alone with her flavorless mix of powder, though, her lips would tremble - until her eyes caught sight of the strange heroes who, day in and day out, would flip and fly above her city.

Wash Captains. That’s what her dad said when she asked him. And they weren’t villain fighters - they were actually cleaners like both of them were. Still, hearing their hoots and howls as they tumbled from building to building, their washbots flocking behind them like rafts of ducklings, sent a rush up her little spine. The Captains grew into her new idols, another reason for her to dream. And every day during break, she’d make it further up the walls of her own building, brave a further jump from height to height. All until one day, she plucked up the courage to follow her heroes, trying to keep up, but finding herself slipping behind.

“Talia, you’ve got a tail!” A Captain signaled for the group to slow down. The lot of them, adults between their early twenties and late forties, decelerated to a pace that wouldn’t endanger the kid, though they did this surreptitiously enough that the twelve-year-old thought she was catching up.

“What’s your name, speedster?” The youngest one, Talia, asked.

“I’m Robyn Kane!”

“Well, you’ve got guts coming up here. I like that.” The rest of the group didn’t shiver or scowl, instead, they just shared a kind, collective laugh. “What’s good?” “Nice to meet you, Robyn,” voices chorused. And when they darted off to work on their respective building groups, Talia gestured for Robyn to follow her. She stopped at the edge of a metallic skyscraper, her washbots swarming to wipe the windows of the behemoth adjacent. From dawn until dusk, she let Robyn shadow her, explaining what a Wash Captain’s duties were, the test it to become one, and difficulties the job brought with it. Long hours, limited work lifespan, days without rest…the ability to problem solve and stay cool under pressure was paramount. But if you were the right kind of person, you’d find family here like no other. And Robyn hoped, hoped, hoped that with enough effort, when the year’s test came around, she’d be ready to join them.

Setbacks were inevitable. Sprained wrists, lack of formal training, exhaustion after back-to-back days at the factory…nothing, though, that could quite prepare her for the sickness. A flu, its origin the lungs of a machine operator, spread through the adults, then the children, then to her. Everyone and their uncle hacked up phlegm for two weeks, their faces pale green from the night sweats, though none fell quite so ill as Robyn Kane. A hospital rush led to injections, led to IV drips, led to peals of hushed conversation, led to the sound of a final lamp smashing outside her door.

“The warden promised they’d treated her!“

"The CD4 count-”

“Fuck the CD4 count!”

“Sir, can you just…”

Robyn shivered. What was her dad talking about with that doctor? Was she going to die? And what had made him so angry? Her eyes had already begun drooping shut when Atticus came back in, though, his face shaking with anger.

“What’s going on, dad?” Robyn tried to roll to face him, but he shushed her.

“You’re going to be okay, kid.” He kissed her head, sitting gently at the side of her hospital bed. Only when he thought she was asleep did a sob leave him, the sound of heartbreak, of betrayal, of an uncertain man.

In truth, the doctors weren’t sure how she’d survived so long. ARHIV - or advanced resistant human immunodeficiency virus - was livable with treatment, but going nearly thirteen years without, especially after being born with it…well, complications usually reared their heads sooner. Still, the NRTIs seemed to be lowering the viral load in her blood, and with the aid of intensive anti flu meds, her immune system managed to struggle through.

“Take your meds,” Dr. Ota said, as Robyn and her dad breathed fresh air for the first time in three weeks. “And remember, any fluids that come out of you are not to be touched by others.”

Atticus wanted Robyn to rest. She was still weak from her bout of illness, but almost a month had gone by without any exam preparation, and she wouldn’t let anything get in the way of her dream. She pushed herself to jump farther, to climb higher, to memorize every protocol in the Washbook. And when test day came, she gave it everything she got. “We’ll call,” her examiner promised, though the stern look on his face was airtight. “We’ve only got room for about three people this year, so don’t get your hopes up too high, okay, kid?” But when the buzz rang out on her armlet that evening, her hopes had already soared through the roof.

“Hello?”

“Hey, is this Robyn?” Talia’s voice drifted in through the speaker.

“Yeah, yeah, this is me, Robyn- Robyn Kane - Kane, Robyn - I-”

“Marks Building, speedster. Tomorrow. 5AM.”

And then the call clicked out, and a teenage squeal woke nearly half of the building.

The job wasn’t all games and glory. Most days, she went home with limbs that threatened to tear off, but how many people could say they ended a shift by skydiving off a building? Magnetic gloves carried her to the very top of the city, reminding her of her smallness, though a hoot from one Wash Captain to another reminded her she was never alone. Skyscrapers rushed together as air gave way to metal under her feet, running upwards and downwards, leaping from one to another with an expert’s grace. This was, save for her, the kind of movement reserved for heroes, and shadowing other Captains to get the hang of more advanced techniques ensured she continued to grow. From this vantage point too came new insight on the city - inequity others more often chose to ignore. Apartment Piles - swaying stacks of low-income housing - were collapsing. At first, it seemed accidental, but then the breadth of the falls seemed more sinister. Factories bought out the land. Overwatchers failed to check the sites. And since a lot of first responders wouldn’t set foot in the rougher neighborhoods, the Captains took it upon themselves to search and rescue.

Such was her transformation from girl to hero. Pulling injured folks from buildings, keeping kids safe…it was this grit and responsibility that matured her. Time with her dad became precious. Happy hours with friends began to mean more. But youth was still youth, after all, and when time brought on an admirer, Robyn’s heart began to palpitate.

There’s was a typical teen meeting - boy watched girl soar from building to building, boy plucked up the courage to wave, girl told him she’d come say hi during her lunch break. And so said boy appeared day after day, wonderstruck in crooked glasses, his hand outstretched to offer a cool bottle of water. A Harbor boy, Deek Jenkins. When they talked, her lies grew from goosebumps to mountains - yes, her mom was nice, yes, she’d eaten a mango, yes, her dad was a world-saving space pilot and, if she disappeared for a few days, it was because she helping him fight off evil. Truth be told, she wanted to keep Deek around. But how could a Harbor boy remain interested if he knew about her dark origins, her sickness, how a job washing windows was the most exciting thing that’d ever happened to her? Instead, she told him about the skybirds, the archipelagos, the burning sands. All while the virus inside her was shifting, overcoming her medications, and threatening to overcome her as well.

Time passed. Deek began bringing two water bottles. Robyn always finished the one he brought with a still-thirsty gulp, then gobbled down two, then three, and he was about to bring four when she stopped showing up.

“Check the clinic on Fourth, kid,” the Wash Captain, Talia, who visited in Robyn’s stead offered. So check Deek did.

“Hey,” he greeted, pulling a whole cooler of water bottles to her hospital bed. She uncapped one.

“You’ve found me out, Jenkins.” The twenty-year-old’s lips quirked upward, falling as a hack expelled from her lungs. “I’ve caught an ‘opportunistic infection.’ Tuberculosis. Not fun stuff. And while we’re at it, I’ve got another disease called ARHIV, which my doc just said’ll probably kill me by 35. And my mom-”

“Was a rebel terrorist,” Deek finished for her. “Who killed upwards of a hundred Overwatchers and their associates. She was sentenced to death six months after being turned in by a man named Thomas Martineaux, and would’ve been sentenced immediately had she not been pregnant with you.”

Robyn nodded. “Happy?”

“No.” He paused. “I mean, yes, that you were honest with me.”

“Why’d you hang around then, if you knew?”

Deek shrugged. “I guess I just liked you.”

“I guess I just liked you too.”

Robyn got over her infection. Time went on, work continued, and she was back on the rescue grind. The number of collapses grew, and the public’s anxiety grew with it. Her dad, who’d been promoted to a managing janitor inside the factory, spent time cleaning the inside of apartments despite danger, and three times, buildings collapsed with him in them. Each time, Robyn would hold her breath, her body trembling, her boots pounding miles to find he was okay, but there was never a second to spare for a hug or a word of relief when she got there. Every moment was instead spent pulling people from the wreckage, searching for help, until one day, a shard of glass changed everything.

“Don’t-” Robyn tried, but Talia had already reached in with a cut hand to pull it out. She jerked her leg away at the last minute, preventing contact, but it was in this moment that she realized her own body was a danger, herself a hazard that could be spread on. How could she have been so reckless, so stupid, to endanger everybody? Any time, she could’ve gotten cut. Any day, she could’ve spread her disease. Rescue efforts were abandoned, and happy hours avoided for fear of being seen as a coward. Until Deek Jenkins, again, came to her aid.

A birthday present - the big twenty-five. Robyn was huddled up on the couch, watching a livestream of an apartment collapse from her armlet, when Deek came in.

“Shouldn’t you be at work?” She asked, but he just grinned at her, extending a parcel from his hands to hers.

“I, uh, made this.” His eyes sparkled as she unwrapped it, a costume of fine, black material, cape included. “I know the design is kind of corny, but you’ve always been into the hero thing and you’ve seemed so down ever since Talia, um…the fabric’s cut proof. In the case that something gets through, though, there’s a compound on the inside that’ll immediately clot your blood, so people are safe, no spread. And I also wanted to tell you that I-”

“I love it, Deek.” Robyn’s lips rose, then fell as her eyes honed in on her screen. A pair of Overwatchers, their bodies too small to be seen clearly without zooming in, moved in the corner.

A familiar face, familiar gait, familiar everything. Suddenly, it all made sense. She checked her armlet.

“8:30. Pile A7X.” The apartment her dad was suppose to be cleaning. Time to put Deek’s outfit to the test.

The rescue mission was a rush of pure adrenaline. A building scaled, a fire alarm pulled, and hundreds evacuated in the nick of time. She gave no name - a vigilante, in and out before anybody could ask. And now it was time to get to the bottom of the collapses.  

She made her way to the factory. Dark, no people or stars to be seen. If she could get into her dad’s office, maybe there’d be a list, some way to predict the next Pile falls. She’d save hundreds of lives, expose a massive conspiracy -and then a dot of red light materialized on her chest.

“Robyn.” Her father’s voice broke the silence. “I can explain-” “Explain what? How you’ve been killing innocent people for years?” All those apartments cleaned, how she thought he’d actually been in danger.

“Rebel suspects, Robyn. They’re killing thousands. Hear me out, I-”

Her eyes hardened. “You’re going to pay for this.”

Atticus’ lip twitched, another Overwatcher making his way beside him.

“We’ll kill her off, Martineaux. Don’t worry about it.” The man raised his mass accelerator, his finger draped on the trigger and then… five shots. A dropped body. But her dad’s weapon had made the blast.

“I’m sorry, Robyn.”

Another rustle. Deek- Deek had followed her. Maybe they could overpower him, find a way out, but Atticus whipped around, firing a shot before the boy could even blink. His body fell, an innocent who’d given his world for her. And then another shot. There was no time to think, no time to process, only dark.

When her eyes opened, they saw earth.

                                                                  file: known associates

KIT BEISEL - although many of the crew seem eager to hear more of your great adventures, kit always seems to sit in the corner with a glint of skepticism in his eye. it is the kind of look that must come from years of dealing with frauds like you, and your greatest fear is it one day leading to question on the validity of the intricate tales you’ve constructed. you try to avoid him all you can and hope that he keeps his tongue, should he have any real suspicions.