Thinking that you are clever, you attempt to utilize second person perspective. However, try as you might, you just cannot seem to convince yourself that you are Hannah. This is because you are not Hannah. Hannah is Hannah, and you are you, so this plan is doomed to failure. It dawns on you that you simply will not get to have a Hannah POV sequence.

Feeling dejected by that revelation, you look down at yourself, then you look at George, then back to yourself, then back to George. Sadly, you are not George, but you can smell like George if you get back inside my head where you belong. Where've you been, anyway? Last thing I remember was something about bloody mud. Bah. I'm too hungry for dwelling on memories, so let's just crack these eyes of mine open and see what's going on.

PAIN! Pain is what's going on! Painful light that stabs the retinas! I clamp my eyes shut and try to shield them with my oddly heavy arm, and then my stomach twists as I nearly give myself a bloody nose with the plaster encasing my forearm. I hate casts, and my arm isn't too happy about its treatment either. Worst of all, my feet are naked. I grit my teeth, which feel vaguely different, and squint blearily out at the cruel world as I struggle to get out of bed.

It's a struggle because somebody is holding me down. I guess they've been talking at me this whole time too. I close my eyes again and focus on my ears. Yeah, those are words I'm hearing.

"-will bring you food," she says.

I calm down and try to say something witty back, but whatever comes out of my mouth isn't English. That's okay. It wasn't actually witty after all, so I probably saved myself some embarrassment. I shake my head and manage to wake up a bit more. English, take two: "Wha's goin' on? Where'm I?"

"You're at Winston Biotech, George. Tamara's people patched you up."

I still can't really see, but the voice sounds familiar. "That you Paula? Turn off light. Too bright."

"Oh, sorry." Her hands unlatch from my shoulders and I feel more than see her move away from the bed. Excellent. While she's distracted with flipping the light, I use my good arm to throw the sheets off and climb out of bed.

I wake up to feel somebody's hand on my forehead. The light is comfortably dim, at least, so when my eyes snap open I get a face full of Paula instead of pain. Huge improvement. "Wha's going on?" I ask. "You okay? You don' look okay."

"I'm great, George. You're the one who just fell out of bed and fainted. Lucky you didn't rip out your IV."

"I feel fine. Tired and a little sore, but fine. Where're my real clothes? Hospital gowns are stupid."

"No, George, you're not fine. Those are the painkillers. You have four broken ribs, a punctured lung, a fractured arm, and you've been unconscious for the last three days. Hopefully you didn't make anything worse when you fell just now."

"Oh. I need food."

She rolls her eyes. "Yes, I called Tamara. She's having a tray of food sent now."

"How'd I get hurt?"

"You don't remember?"

"Gimme a hint."

She turns on the TV and flips through a few stations, all of which are running local news. I catch flashes of looters, protesters, weird costumes, and a wall of water before she stops on one showing City Hall. She sits on the side of the bed while I watch the news run clips of me fighting people in suits. Oh yeah. Most of Friday's events come crashing back. "That was a busy day. You said I've been out for three, so is it Tuesday now?"

"Yeah. You almost died, George."

"I still don't remember that part- no, wait... I got a text. Terence. Mom! Where is she?! Is she okay?!"

Paula pins me down before I can leap out of bed. "She's in the next room over. Calm down. You got there in time."

"So she's okay?"

Paula hesitates and then shakes her head. "She's alive, George. She's alive and she's stable. That'll have to be enough for now."

I sag back down into the bed with a groan. "This is all my fault."

"How?"

"Terence."

"George, it's-"

"He only went after her to get to me, and he only wanted me because I got him arrested."

"Unless there's something you didn't tell me, George, Terence got himself arrested."

"Because of my interference."

"You know as well as I do that there was no way you could have expected any of that to happen, George. All you did was try to stop a bully, and it probably would have worked if not for Pharmedica. They only had me for a day, George, and it was horrible. They had him a whole month."

"Where is he, anyway? Did he get away?"

Paula gives me a grim look and hesitates before answering. "He's at the morgue. They're still trying to figure out how to cut him open for an autopsy."

I let out a relieved breath. "Good. One less problem to worry about." She shakes her head a little and frowns at me. "What? You're not going to give me one of those 'killing people is bad' lectures, are you? I thought we were on the same page."

"We are, George, but I don't have to like it."

"Good, because you shouldn't. I don't either." I shrug. "Subject change. You've been saying my name a lot. It's creeping me out."

She shrugs back. "You almost died, George. Maybe I'm feeling clingy."

"You know," I say with a grin, "I wouldn't mind doing a little clinging myself."

Paula smiles and leans in close. "Sounds like a plan," she says softly before pressing her lips to mine.

I reach up with my good hand and- Hey! Uh uh. This is none of your business, perv. Here, you just pay attention to my mystifyingly meandering monologue of innerness and distraction while my nattering narration calmly caresses your cranium with cunning consonance and perplexing periods of oppressively obtuse and ostentatious proclamations of vapidly vacuous verbosity.

"Not to rain on y'all's parade," says a voice from the door a few minutes later, "but that's looking a little too close to cannibalism for comfort. Let's get some food into George's belly before I have to build you a prosthetic face, Paula."

Paula scrambles back to make space for the tray, her face as red as mine feels, and it occurs to me that I don't have my mask on, meaning my blush is also visible, but more importantly, I DON'T HAVE MY MASK ON. I haul up my cast to block my face, upsetting my stomach and bopping my nose again in the process, and I scrabble with my good hand for my blanket. Paula catches my arm before I can dive under and locks eyes with me. "She already knows, George. Relax."

I glance past her and see Tamara smirking at me past a tray of food. "I've known for a while, Mr. Thompson. Don't worry, we've kept your face covered as much as possible around everybody else."

I nod and lower my cast as she sets the tray in front of me. The tray of delicious dinner delicacies like flavorless oatmeal, bland sausage, and relatively okay yogurt. I'm too hungry to care about quality anyway; the tray is my whole world for the next five minutes. Swallowing is slightly painful for some reason, but the painkillers make it easy to ignore, and most of this food is mushy. Even the sausage is pretty tender.

Eventually I come up for air and notice that Tamara is holding a stethoscope to my chest. "Yeah, he's fine," she's saying to Paula.

"How's Mom?" I ask.

Tamara glances at the wall, then she looks me in the eye. "Alive. We've had to restart her heart a couple times, and I'm not sure exactly how long she was without air before I got there. She's stable for now, and we even managed to avoid any amputations, but whether she'll pull through is anybody's guess. Honestly, George? It's not looking good."

"I want to see her."

She nods with a sad smile. "Sure. First thing tomorrow." I start to object, but she raises her voice. I raise mine too, but my damaged throat can't keep up with hers. "You are not leaving that bed until morning," she insists. "Paula told me what you did earlier. You're lucky you didn't land on the broken ribs. Do it again and I'll take away your pain killers. I can tell from the x-rays that this isn't your first rodeo, so you know how unpleasant those ribs will be. Am I understood?"

"Understood," I say with a nod.

"Good." She removes my IV and her expression softens. "Now, you focus on resting up, you hear? Forchester is going to need you back out there shaking things up in the near future, so you can't afford to set back your healing by doing anything stupid."

After I finish eating and Tamara leaves with the tray, I turn to Paula. She grins at me. "Ready to pick up where we left off?" she asks, leaning in until our noses touch.

I take a deep breath and then shake my head. "No. Later. What I need right now... is news."

I blink at the intensity of her smile. "I thought you'd never ask!" She snuggles up closer and pulls out a notebook. "So, I haven't had my own feet on the ground since I caught up with you here on Friday night, but I've been coordinating with your elves. Yes, I know who they are; get over it. They've given me a copy of MESH.io and kept me in the loop as they tested the force field." She pats the notebook. "I've got the data here for you to look over, and Hannah should get back in about an hour if you need firsthand accounts, but the short version is that it's even stronger than the one you tested at City Hall, and visual light is the only thing we've found that gets through, but they do have openings somewhere for water, electricity, and now sewage. We also know they're opening holes for air exchange, but only temporarily and we haven't been able to locate where. We do have good ideas about where the infrastructure holes are, but we haven't investigated yet since they're probably being watched."

"And the city? I saw flashes when you were channel surfing, but..."

"Pharmedica held a few rallies on Saturday and Sunday. Dillan's Fist of Derring-Do disrupted some of them and killed a few Pharmedicans. After each of these rallies dispersed, dozens of dead or dying attendees were found in the vicinity. Even at the rallies that didn't turn violent. As far as we can tell, these were recruitment drives, and their new recruits all received an injection of some sort because each location was littered with used syringes. Several of the people who died... Do you remember the first week after you rescued us from Pharmedica and people's powers were just emerging? You told me about that guy who turned into acid goop? There have been several of those."

"So you think they're enticing people to join them by offering powers, and it has a large chance of death?"

"Yeah. Worse than the rate we saw at their lab, and general onset is quicker. From the number of people who still haven't turned up, and the number who have and demonstrated powers, we're estimating that their original treatment had a survival rate of 90%. This serum is looking closer to 50%, just over the first hour."

I whistle. "And new people with powers have been turning up?"

She nods. "Starting yesterday, when Pharmedica returned to City Hall in greater numbers and started setting up shop. By that point the city was getting pretty chaotic. The police have been run ragged just trying to keep the gangs and rioters from getting completely out of control, so they haven't done anything about Pharmedica's occupation yet. They keep telling people to stay indoors, but Dillan's Fist is telling people to stand up for themselves and fight back against Pharmedica, and Pharmedica is telling people to return to their jobs as though we aren't all being held hostage. Meanwhile the Dream Enforcers are taking advantage of the chaos to push into Butterfly territory, and Cherry District has become a war zone. The good news is that your uncle says the fire department, utilities board, and hospital have all been coordinating with both the police and occasionally Pharmedica to keep the city from collapsing entirely. But things are pretty bad. Oh, and the temperature has been dropping. Joe says the force field is absorbing infrared, so we've got an anti-greenhouse effect going on."

"What about the outside?"

Paula winces. "The Tonbosa rose a good twenty feet before it found a path around the west border of the force field. I don't know how far north along the banks got flooded, but West Forchester is a few feet underwater in most places and a lot more in some. People have been putting up signs and posters along the south and east portions of the force field, inside and out, trying to let people on either side know what's going on. There have been attempts at real-time communication, but Pharmedica tends to eventually notice and break them up. According to the local news stations, the National Guard have established communication with the police and are coordinating something, but we don't have any details on that."

"So the internet is still down? They haven't set up any visual spectrum relays through the field?" She nods. I look at my cast and wiggle my fingers. "Pharmedica needs to be destroyed, but I'm in no shape to do it." I purse my lips and then sigh. "It's your turn to be the hero, Paula."

Her eyes widen. "What? No, George, I'm no hero, and I'm not leaving you here alone."

"I'm not alone. Tamara's here, and her people, and Mom too. Sort of." My confidence dips as I remember her situation. I am such a screw-up.

"George-"

"Paula. The city needs you. You've already been working with Hanna and Joe. That's good. We can help you. I've always liked doing things myself, and that's gotten me into trouble more than once when I insisted on doing things on my own instead of relying on my friends." I wave my cast at myself. "I can't do it myself this time. I need to rely on you, Joe, Hannah, Unc, Tiff, even Tamara if we can convince her." I'm a screw-up, but I learn from my mistakes. Eventually.

"No, George. When you're better-"

"There isn't time to wait on me to heal, Paula! You said it yourself: they're recruiting. They're building a superhuman army. Maybe they intend to use it to wage war, or maybe they just want to demonstrate a product, but either way a lot of people are going to be hurt. More the longer we wait. You could stop them short, Paula! You're smart, brave, and sneaky. You've got access to my experience, Joe's tech and infrastructure, and Hannah's understanding of people. And you have superpowers of your own. You can do this, Paula. You can be the hero of this story."

She looks down at her hands and makes a small flame, then crushes it in her fist. "No. Tamara figured out who you are. I figured out who you are. If we can do it, other people can too, and from there it wouldn't take much more to guess where you are. I'm not leaving you here like this without me. You got me out of Pharmedica, and now it's my turn to protect you."

I blink, taking in her rumpled and tired appearance again, and something clicks. "You been in here for the last three days? You haven't gone home? What about your parents? They must be worried out of their minds!"

She looks at me oddly. "My parents are dead, George."

"Wh- how? They got caught up in the fighting?"

"No." She sighs and looks disappointed. "I'm an orphan. I've been an orphan as long as I can remember. They died when I was a baby. I thought you knew."

"No. You never said anything."

"Because I thought you knew. After you got all paranoid about whether I was being abused last month, I figured you investigated and realized I lived in foster care, and then kept your mouth shut after that because you knew it was a sore subject. But you're telling me you didn't know that and just never thought to ask about my family?"

Great, now she looks hurt. "I'm sorry? I do kind of have a lot on my plate, and that's exactly why I've been so reluctant to start any relationships in the first place. I don't have the time and energy to do it right, and that's not fair to you. I thought you understood that when you decided to throw yourself at me."

Paula sighs. "I thought I did too. I'm... used to not being people's first priority. So I thought..."

"Um." What do I even say to that? "If... if this isn't working? I understand if you want to-"

"Stop. No. We're not breaking up over one missed expectation. Jeeze. And here I thought I was being insecure!"

"What? I'm not insecure! I'm trying to be understanding and respectful."

She shakes her head. "You're not so different from some of the foster kids I've met, now that I think about it. You're scared of attachments."

"Bull."

"Oh? Hannah told me about when she introduced Tiffany to you. You went out of your way looking for an excuse to reject her."

"Yeah, because I knew having a fourth wheel around would make it harder to discuss anything with Joe and Hannah. And it did."

"You've avoided relationships since well before you became Wheels, and you have a knee-jerk resistance to the idea of your mom dating. You also never joined any clubs or teams."

I squint at her. "You've been spending way too much time talking to Hannah."

Paula shrugs. "What did you expect us to do? Sit here in silence and stare at you for hours? We talked about lots of stuff, and now it's all falling into place. Ever since you lost your-" She stopped and blinked. "Wait. No, I'm doing that thing again. Antagonistic prying. Sorry."

I sigh and try to rub my eyes with my right hand, but my guts remind me that I should use my other one before I can increase my bruising. "You're probably right, though. Ever since they died... stuff's so easy to lose, you know? Things, homes, people..."

Paula nods and snuggles back up beside me. "I know. I used to have this snake plushy. It was falling apart at the seams, but it was the only thing I had left from my first foster parents. I was with them from the age of one until five. I got moved to another home when they divorced, and then I bounced around for a few years. A lot of people insist on going through your belongings and discarding the old, ratty stuff, but I managed to hold onto that snake for years. Then when I was twelve, I ended up with some people who just didn't care how much it mattered to me. According to them, it was old and dingy and I wasn't some baby who needed a stuffed animal. They burned it. So I burned their house down."

"No way."

She grins. "Well, I tried. When they were out doing yard work and I was supposed to be cleaning the kitchen, I got out a frying pan and made it look like I tried to start dinner. Then I spilled a bunch of vegetable oil all over the stove top and turned it on. I forgot to pull the battery out of the smoke alarm, though, so they came running and put the fire out before it got out of control. I'm glad I screwed it up now, of course, but at the time I was so mad at myself for missing that."

"Wow. The worst thing I ever did as a kid was run away and engage in a little petty theft, and I had a good excuse what with how Mom had stopped feeding me."

"What?"

"She's doing way better now and has been sober for years, but she's an alcoholic. I probably am too; it runs in our family. I intend to teetotal, because screw that. Anyway. This was two years after- after the riots. She hadn't taken it well. Neither of us did. She'd totally imploded. Couldn't hold a job, drank through the life insurance, and mostly forgot I existed. Eventually there was nothing consumable in the house but alcohol, and I got fed up. I was ten, so basically a grown man as far as I was concerned. I packed my backpack and hit the road. I figured I'd hike out of the city and make a living mowing lawns, raking leaves, and tutoring third graders in math and science. Didn't work out. My feet got sore and I got hungry way before I'd made it out of Cherry, so I sat down next to a homeless guy and asked him to teach me how to hunt rats for food. He brought me to a soup kitchen instead and hung out while we ate, but it didn't take long before I realized he and the soup lady were teaming up to try to pry an address or phone number out of me so they could call Mom. At first I wasn't worried, because I figured I'd just keep my mouth shut. Then I saw the soup lady talking on the phone and looking at me, and I realized she'd probably called the child catchers."

Paula laughs. "The child catchers? Seriously?"

"I was ten, shut up. I didn't feel like getting put in a cage and brought back home, so I did a 'hey what's that' and ran off before they could get me. The soup kitchen was in the opposite direction of the lawn-mowing utopia outside the city, so I had to backtrack. It was night by the time I made it out of Forchester, and I didn't have anything to barter for a bed, so I slept in a dog house with a cocker spaniel named Fuzzyflanks as my pillow. It was actually pretty cozy."

"The dog didn't bark?"

"No way. Fuzzyflanks ain't no narc. She even tried to share her food with me when she realized I was hungry, but I wasn't that hungry. Her owners chased me off in the morning though, when they saw me crawling out of her doghouse. Wouldn't even listen to my yard-care pitch."

"The jerks."

"Yeah! So, I headed down the road and tried somewhere else, but they just gave me breakfast and tried to call the child catchers on me when I wouldn't tell them where I lived. I grabbed a banana for the road and ran for it. After three more failures like that, I gave up and headed back into Forchester with a new plan. It had been made abundantly clear to me by then that society wasn't going to let me exist legitimately, so I said to myself, 'screw society!' Mom wasn't going to feed me, the soup kitchens were just a honey pot for the child catchers, and the suburbanites were too stuck-up to employ me, so what other choice did I have but to become a bandit?"

"Did you steal from the rich and give to the poor?"

"No. The poor were in league with the soup kitchens, remember? Plus I'd been mad at the world even before I ran away. Now I was George the Kidd, looking out for Numero Uno and sticking it to the Man. I managed to steal a whole five dollars that day from a busker, though he got my shoe before I escaped. That beautiful, wrinkled Lincoln bought me a big container of peanut butter from a convenience store, and I stole a plastic spoon from the ice cream area. Best supper ever."

Paula snorts. "You know those spoons are free for the taking as long as you buy something, right?"

"Yeah, I know that now, but this was a huge heist when I was ten."

"So how long did your life of crime last?"

"Three more days. The first day went fine. By the second day the street musicians were catching on. The third day one of them caught me. I wasn't going down without a fight, so I gave him one and he returned the favor. I managed to get away, but I lost my backpack and with it all my clothes, peanut butter, Kool-Aid packets, and candy bars. I figured I'd better lie low for a while after that. I'd learned about restaurant leftovers by listening in on homeless people, so I still had a source of food, but getting it was gross and sometimes there were aggressive rats. After a week of that, I finally caught food poisoning and wasn't able to escape when a meddling hooker tried to catch me. I'd almost made it, but there was this railing in the way and I got stuck squeezing through it. She hauled me straight into the backseat of a cop car as soon as she got me out, and then the cop took us to the hospital. At that point the hooker wandered off with an orderly, and that was the last I ever saw of her. The cop tried to interrogate me while we were waiting on the doctors, but I just sang a song I'd made up earlier that week about the fifth amendment. After that he spent a long time on the phone, and then somehow Uncle Jeff showed up. Turned out he'd gone to check up on us, realized I wasn't home, and notified the police, so they'd had my description and photo at the station. I lived with Uncle Jeff for the next year while Mom put herself back together."

"Wow. I ran away once, but I just went back to one of my earlier foster parents. They gave me cookies, then narced me out to social services, and I was placed with yet another family who were even worse than the last one. Those were the ones I had just before the Reynolds, my current family. I like the Reynolds."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. They're not the best I've had. They care, but they don't really love us. They get a paycheck and they get to feel like they're doing a good deed. But they're responsible about it. They're not bad people pretending to be good. They are good, they're just... wary of attachments. Like you, and like a lot of the kids I've met. Too many things have gone wrong in the past. The system jerks us all around so much, sometimes for little reason. That leaves scars and makes it hard to form bonds, so they don't really let their guards down and get close to us. But they're still there, you know? They aren't neglectful, they try to impart useful life skills, they help us out when we struggle... it's just that they feel more like teachers than parents. And I'm fine with that. I know from experience that this is one of the better arrangements."

"Mmm. I think Hannah would trade you in a heartbeat."

"I noticed that. She refuses to talk about her parents, and when I asked Joe he changed the subject. Is she okay? I mean, knowing you I assume it can't be too bad or you'd have done something about it, but..."

"They're both lawyers. Her dad sorts out corporate contract issues, and her mom helps disadvantaged families deal with lawsuits and stuff. That was how I met Hannah; Mom was having trouble with debt collectors using shady tactics, and Mrs. Bakshi helped sort it out. They're nice folks, at first glance. Problem is, they're the sort who like strict, asinine rules and get really uptight about things to the point where you could almost make a case that it's child abuse. No sweets, no sleepovers, no video games, no comic books, and no cartoons past the age of six. Then there were the mandatory piano lessons, dance lessons, public speaking lessons, and their version of youth group. Their idea of bonding activities is to drag her along to see Lawyers In Action. Their taste in music sucks, and the closest things they ever do to fun are operas, golf, birdwatching, and some hardcore amateur astronomy. Admittedly, that last one is kind of cool in an abstract way, but I learned the hard way that actually participating is torture, and they made her help at least twice a week."

"What's this? George Thompson badmouthing astronomy?"

"Hey, I want to go to space and do stuff, not spend two hours each night meticulously cross-referencing a tiny patch of the sky with the star charts in hopes of finding some anomaly to name after my daughter so I can show her how much more I love her than some chump who just buys his kids ice cream and lets them beat him at Mario Kart."

"Okay, I see your point."

"All of that would be bad enough, but they've also got all these really bogus expectations about who Hannah is 'supposed' to be that they kept trying to ram down her throat, and they don't fit her at all. They're staunchly religious; she's atheist. They wanted her to join a preppy club like the debate team; she took up roller derby. They want her to be something fancy like a lawyer, doctor, or engineer; she wants to run a skating rink. And to make matters worse, they're the sort who get offended if you allow them to see that you're angry with them. They actually called the police on me once because I tried defending Hannah, got pissed off when they wouldn't listen, and had the absolute temerity to clench my fist in frustration. It was scary at first, but it turned out to be pretty funny in the end. They lectured me about using words instead of force until Officer Susan showed up, then they tried to sell her on the story that I'd shaken my fist and threatened them with violence. That backfired when Hannah popped up with the footage from their security camera and one of the most satisfied smirks I've ever seen. Officer Susan ended up writing them a citation, and while they were busy trying to talk their way out of it, Hannah and I snuck off to go squirrel fishing at the park."

"Squirrel... fishing?"

I sigh and shake my head. "You poor sheltered thing. Anyway, they kept increasing the pressure on Hannah to conform to their standards, and things got steadily worse. Then they moved to Vista Grande and enrolled her in St. James, and that was the final straw. She ran away and moved in with us."

"Wait, what? When was this?"

"The summer before ninth grade."

"And your mom was okay with it?"

"Well, she wasn't happy about it. Mom called Hannah's parents immediately to let them know where she was, but she convinced them to give Hannah a day to cool off before they came to collect her. Then when they showed up the next morning, she refused to let them inside until they promised that they'd 'solve it with words' instead of dragging Hannah home, and the three of them spent the next few hours trying to convince her to go back. When it became clear that Hannah was dead set on staying and the Bakshis were looking like they might snap and drag her out by the ear like a bunch of hypocrites, Mom took them off to the side and explained that if they did force Hannah to go home, she'd probably just run away again and hide somewhere instead of staying with a friend where they might find her. I overheard, because of course I was listening in, so I started loudly telling Hannah about all the best spots I'd found to sleep in back when I'd run away. Her mom very nearly hit me; it was great!"

"That's not great at all! It's terrible!"

"Nah. You don't understand how cloying that lady's smarmy stoicism is. Seeing her finally lose her composure was really satisfying. Besides, this was a good thing. Hannah's parents looked genuinely hurt by her rejection, and I caught a flash of guilt on Hannah's face too. She won't talk about it, but I'm pretty sure that was the moment she realized how much her parents actually meant to her, and the moment they realized that she was deeply upset, not just following my 'bad example' and engaging in petty teenage rebellion. Of course, the three of them being who they are, they were all too stubborn to actually resolve anything then and there. But it was the first crack in the ice. After that they arranged with Mom to check in with them every few days, gave her some money for food, and then stayed out of our hair. I'm sure they thought it would only be a few days or something, but it was the entire rest of the summer. Then school started and Hannah still refused to go back. She just walked into Coldriver like she was supposed to be there and sat in on whatever classes caught her interest or seemed important. Some of the teachers complained and had Officer Wells toss her out, but she just snuck back in and found more welcoming classes to crash. Most of the teachers decided that if she wanted to learn and wasn't being disruptive, they weren't going to stop her. After two weeks of that, her parents finally gave up and moved back to Parkville, so she moved back in with them and they formalized the Coldriver thing."

"That's unbelievable."

"Her parents are kind of jerks, but they respect conviction and a willingness to follow through on threats. As much as she pissed them off with that stunt, she also made them proud. All three of them are conflicted about that. Their whole situation is still a mess, but since then they've at least backed off on a lot of their dumber rules and let her quit the lessons she didn't want so that she could spend time on things she actually cares about. They still get on her case all the time about how she's 'wasting' her potential, but they don't actually interfere with following her interests anymore. Oh, and speaking of her interests, they absolutely love Joe. Another thing she's conflicted about. She loves him, but she hates that they love him."

"I'm guessing I shouldn't let her know you've told me all this."

"Yeah, but she doesn't get to go talking about me behind my back and then get upset when people talk about her."

"Fair enough. But as long as we're dishing the dirt, what about Joe? What's his crazy story?"

I snort. "Joe? He's just Joe. No crazy to be found."

"So he never hot wired a moped and ran away from home, or burned down the garage when a robot blew up, or out-wrestled seventeen consecutive competitors for Hannah's heart? No zany escapades or stints as a brigand?"

"Well, we did blow him up once, just a little bit. We were trying to make homemade matches and it went wrong."

"Ooh, tell me more!"

"There isn't any more. That's what happened."

"Why were you making matches?"

"Because we found a recipe on the internet and thought it would be cool?"

"Well, what happened? How'd he blow up?"

"We're not entirely sure, but we figure the moral of the story is don't let idiot children play with phosphorus unsupervised. He's such a boy scout that his parents trust him just a little too much, even now. They've got my number pretty well, though." I pause for a moment in thought, then grin. "Speaking of unsupervised combustion, you're going to be a superhero, Paula."

She leans away from me with a frown. "I thought I'd distracted you from that."

"A spinning wheel always returns to the beginning," I intone.

"You're a fortune cookie now?"

"Paula. Be the hero."

"George, I'm just one person. Pharmedica have at least twelve core members, plus another eight known powered recruits and potentially another several dozen of them, depending how many of the survivors from their serum actually developed powers. I can't fight that."

"Sure you can. Hemopalooza had more numbers than that, and I did just fine. The trick is you don't fight them with your fists. Fight them with your brain. Sabotage their plans, set traps, set them against each other, unnerve them so they make worse decisions, leverage your allies, manipulate your enemies, and generally just be awesome like me."

"I- I can't, George. That's not who I am. I can gather intel, help unravel their plots, do detective work. I'm good at that. I can even fight a little, on the small scale. Defend myself. But going up against all of Pharmedica, and the gangs, and whatever the Cueballs are up to with Dillan's Fist? No. This is too big. We should just lie low. Let the National Guard handle it. It's what they're for."

"Hmm." I lean my head back and stare at the ceiling for a bit to think. Paula snuggles up next to me, rests her head on my shoulder, and hums happily. She thinks she's won this argument, but I'm not ready to give up just yet. Forchester needs us. But for now, I guess I'll have to deal with the problems I do know how to solve. I turn to Paula. "I need to see Mom."

"Well, it'll have to wait until tomorrow, because you're not leaving this bed."

I grin. "I don't need to leave it. This is a hospital bed. I might not have wheels right now, but I bet the bed does."

Paula laughs. "Yes. Yes it does."

"Well then, what are you waiting for? Mush!"

She rolls her eyes and gets up to peek into the hallway, then jambs the door open. She disappears into the hall for a moment and I hear another door open, then she comes back and unlocks the wheels on the bed. "And we're off!"

The trip's pretty short; Mom's room is right next to mine. She's in traction and has a depressing number of tubes and wires connected to her. The machines aren't making any angry noises, at least. A large vase of flowers is on the table. "Who brought those?"

"Tiffany, on behalf of her dad. He's stuck Outside, but she said that it's what he'd do if he could."

I nod, and my eyes begin to water as I watch Mom quietly breathing behind an oxygen mask. Paula sits down next to me and gives me a careful hug, but it doesn't change the guilt. I know she was right earlier, but I can't help feeling that this is my fault. I have to fix this. Somehow. I don't think waiting on the military is good idea. We're cut off from the outside world. From supplies. How long before Tamara runs out of whatever drugs she's using to keep Mom alive? This is a research lab, not a hospital, so I doubt she keeps much stockpiled. Just enough for doing trial runs of the treatments and procedures she develops, plus a bit extra for when things go wrong. It won't last.

I reach around to give Paula a hug with my good arm. "If you're not willing to be a hero, Paula, will you at least be my sidekick? Support me? Handle small things?"

"George. You need to heal."

"Exactly, though our first priority is healing Mom, because the status quo is fragile and if she dies I'm going to go off the rails. Especially like this, when it's arguably my fault."

"It's not-"

"Point is, our first priority is healing. Prompt healing. I don't need you to go out and dismantle Pharmedica or end the gang war. Those things can wait and we can all tackle them together, piece by piece. Right now, I just need you to find Dillan. Bring him somewhere nearby, and get him to wait while we bring Mom out to him so he can fix us up."

"We considered that while you were unconscious, but it's too risky. The Fist-"

"-might sneak along and attack while I'm vulnerable. I know, but I can deal with the Fist. I can't deal with Mom dying."

"She's not going to die. She's stable."

"Tamara said she's stable 'for now,' implying that she might stop being stable at some point in the near future." I point at Mom's IV drip. "Speaking of the future, that stuff's finite. How long until we run out? How long will it take the National Guard figure out how to get us out of here? And Mom isn't our only time constraint. Pharmedica's recruiting, building strength. Time isn't something we can spare right now. Enlisting Dillan is a risk, but not getting me back on my feet ASAP is a bigger risk, and letting Mom die because of my screw-ups is the biggest risk yet. I guarantee you I will lose every marble, Paula. Best case scenario is I become suicidally reckless and go out in a blaze of glory."

"No. You're stronger than that, George."

I close my eyes and shake my head. "I'm really not. You haven't been inside my head for the last eight years. I'm tough, but Mom and guilt are weak points. Combine them, and things get very ugly very fast. I had a taste of that Friday." I sigh. "If Mom dies and I go off the rails-"

"George-"

"-you might need to put me down. My danger sense only has a range of a couple seconds. You can plan around it."

"Jesus, George. It's not going to come to that."

"Not if I can help it, no. That's why one of us is going to go get Dillan. I'll do it you won't. I'm not in great shape right now, but I'm functional. Just have to avoid fights or end them before they start." I swing my legs over to the side and start trying to stand. "Where'd Tamara put my gear?"

Paula beats me to her feet and grabs my shoulders, leaning on my to keep me from rising. "Stop." She turns away to stare am Mom, then finally turns back to me. Her blue eyes drill into my soul. "Fine. I'll do it."