Under One Roof

by sarapsys

Summary:

Interrelated patchwork short stories exploring Wammy's House.

Notes:

Originally posted from 03-23-10 to 12-19-11. Reposted to AO3 with minimal edits for formatting and meta.

RE Content: A few notes about this story. I wrote it ten years ago at the time of reposting, and looking back on old work we always realize that our views on various things were incomplete, misinformed, or just straight up incorrect. It's been a long time and I'm not interested in rewriting this story or going over it with a fine-tooth comb for misguided or insensitive content, but I will say up front that from where I'm sitting now, I wrote it with a very limited and reductive view on things like mental health and illness, neurodivergence, abuse, and various cultural issues, as well as a glaring over-reliance on Google Translate for non-English languages. So please read with a saltshaker on hand: this is not an accurate or well-informed representation of any of those things. I am tagging lightly as I post this, since it is long and I barely remember it, but if there are specific tags you recommend adding just lmk.

RE Structure:
Chapters 1-60 are interrelated short stories from the perspectives of dozens of students and staff, most of the OCs, at Wammy's House. 63 and 64 are additional short stories that I threw on the pile.

Chapter 61 in an index describing the rules of the game Hack ACME, which is mentioned a couple times throughout the main story.

Chapter 62 is a character index, listing who OCs are as well as what chapters every character (canon and OC) is in and whether they're the POV, major, or background character. On a related note, I'm so sorry about all these OCs orz

AN from original post: I really just love exploring the idea of Wammy's House...I always imagine it being sort of a darkish Orson Scott Card's Battle School meets Bruce Coville's AI Gang with a dash of Hogwarts thrown in. While writing Sins of the Father I mentally planned out a lot of things that were happening outside of Roger's view, and that really didn't add anything to the point of the story, but I thought were kind of fun. So this will be sort of a collection of very, very loosely related shorty stories compatible with SotF, centered around the House and all the goings-on there. Not in any sort of order, and probably gradually introducing some (ok, a lot of) OCs.

Chapter 1: Swap

All the kids in the House are geniuses, but they're all different flavors of genius, and anyone would be an idiot not to take advantage of living in the middle of such a circus of talent. A white-grey-black market thrives at Wammy's, which the staff is only partially aware of. Things get slipped under doors, emailed on secure connections, passed at the dining hall tables, exchanged at night while dodging the watchful eyes of the matron and her aides. Program code, handmade or upgraded gadgets, consultations, help on homework, loyalty in social and academic and political spats—and of course, the universal currencies, money and cigarettes.

The medium of exchange that gets the most traffic, however, is information. In a place where everyone is scrambling to climb over everyone else, where even the slightest edge can tip the balance, information is gold.

That's why Linda is knocking on Matt's door at 3:00 am two days after Mello runs away.

It comes as no surprise to Matt, who's had several such visitors over the last thirty hours. Everyone knows that he and Qarri are the only ones whose bugs weren't knocked out when Roger upgraded the jammer, and Concord, who also probably could have hacked it, isn't around anymore. She was way too nice for this place, Matt often thinks; she'd share information for pretty damn cheap if she thought it was important enough. M and Q aren't above wringing people out for it. Fresh information, right from the headmaster's office, hot off the presses. Everyone knows that something happened in Roger's office, and Near isn't talking. Literally. Already Sember, Xie, Hopper, Echo, and Paolo have stopped by to buy the gossip; and Isabel made an attempt (stupidly) to wheedle it out under the pretense of comforting him, assuming (incorrectly) that Matt would be vulnerable in the sudden absence of his friend. All in all, Matt stands to make a nice stack in terms of cash and favors off of this unexpected ordeal.

After a moment of waiting, four different locks click, and the door swings open to reveal the hacker. "You want that bite, da?" he mutters, waving her in and snicking the door shut. Dealing in the hall would be stupid; Marta is severe about the curfew, and other students might overhear.

"Da," she confirms, picking carefully around tangles of cords that crisscross the floor in the screenlit darkness. Most of the kids sneak outside or at least open the windows to smoke, since Roger and the matron frown heavily on it, but the recent stress is apparently enough that Matt doesn't care; the room reeks of cigarettes. Screensavers play over three separate monitors and a heavy club mix thrums quietly on the speakers.

"Just a listen, or the clip?" he asks, rifling through the piles of clutter on his desk. He doesn't even have to ask which sound bite she wants. The whole House has been buzzing with furtive speculation, and anyone who can afford it is trying to get it out of someone.

"Clip." It will cost more, but Linda would far rather have her own copy of Matt's recording of Mello and Near's final conversation with Roger, to analyze without anyone observing her reactions. "What's the rate?"

Matt looks at her appraisingly. Linda assumes he does, anyway. He's started wearing those odd mirrored goggles lately (Linda has no idea how he can see in the dark in those things) and so she can see herself, reflected back in the huge round lenses, but not his eyes.

"Draw me a picture."

"…You want a drawing?" Linda repeats, extremely skeptical and just a tad touched, and wondering what, if anything, this request means.

"Don' get all fuzzy on me," says Matt, allowing the barest shade of scorn to color his voice. Not enough to make her mad enough to give up and go to another supplier, but enough to dispel whatever silly romantic notions he figures are cooking up in her head. "Nobody here gonna be anything short of ridiculously successful out there with the wormbait. Ten years and the scribbles in the margins of you math notes gonna be worth a fortune. Sketch me up something that'll tug on the purse strings of little old ladies with a shit ton of money and I get you a copy of that clip. Hao ba?"

"You sure can compliment a girl," she says flatly. So Matt's given up on the succession, it seems. Linda has a sickening feeling she knows exactly what she's going to hear on that clip.

"Tuh. Come back with double D's and we see about compliments," Matt mutters, rolling his eyes and hunting through the boxes of spare computer parts and hardware that line the walls for the desk lamp he uses to work on circuit boards. "I got pencils around here somewhere…." A heap of junk gets shoved off a table to clatter on the floor, the cord of a gaming system unplugged and the lamp cord plugged in. Linda winces at the sudden flare of yellowish light that pools over the table.

She's still a little miffed, but she just has to know what's happened between the top two and really, given the sort of price he could ask, this is a steal. Linda sits down and starts drawing while Matt finds a clean disk and sets about copying the file. It doesn't take either of them long.

"Make sure you sign and date it," Matt tells her as he clicks the disk into a case and tosses it on the table, then stops dead upon seeing what she's drawn. "…That just low."

"In ten years' time s'not gonna be a security issue," Linda says coolly, swiping up the clip before he decides not to let her have it after all.

Matt snorts. "Whatever. Out." The hacker practically shoves her into the hall, and the four locks slot closed again.

"Thanks," she tells the door drily, then hurries back to her room to finally know for sure what the hell is going on around here, why the foundations of the world seem to be crumbling silently beneath their feet.

Meanwhile, Matt lights a cigarette and stares sidelong down at Linda's drawing, golden in the lamplight. A much younger Mello dashes full tilt on the football pitch, one foot swung back in preparation to smash into the ball, and the vague shadows of other players and the treeline are scribbled in behind him. Somehow in a few quick pencil strokes Linda has captured that fierce animal energy, the clench-jawed battle madness in his focused expression and the falcon-dive swoop of his arms.

Yeah, that'll bring in some cash, Matt thinks, and yanks out power cord of that warm yellow light, letting the dim icy glow of the computer monitors reclaim the room.

 

Chapter 2: Compulsion

Notes:

AN: I figure a closed environment like the House would have its own distinct slang...so mini glossary:
scrubbed: removed from the Wammy's program
tuning: psychotherapy
brass: Wammy's staff

This will make somewhat more sense if you've read Sins of the Father; a couple of the OCs are mentioned in passing.

"…Ah," says Sember, who is the first to peek out his door at the insistent tapping sound ringing down the dormitory hall. "I thought Dr. Bull tuned that…habit."

Frozen in the act of nailing a third sock to his door, Jitter somehow manages to look guilty, embarrassed, and smug at the same time. "Torres? Hahaha. Well you know. We discussed it. Talked about it extensively. Beat it to death with a stick. Probably haven't heard the end of it. Guess I gotta go back for more tuning." Turning back to his door, Jitter resumes his frantic little hammer-taps. Another door swings open across the hall.

"All this racket, what that about?" Qarri complains, even as the next door opens and Hopper pokes his oversized nose out. "Uhhhhh…so should we put them locks back on our sock drawers?"

J giggles a little, pulling a fourth sock from his bulging pocket.

"Tch, bu hao a, the brass not gonna like that at all, no," Qarri says, shaking her dark frizzy head. "You gonna get scrubbed if you keep it up, J."

A faintly hysterical note colors Jitter's nervous giggle, and he hammers faster. The other three watch, exchanging sideways glances.

"Who you tag?" Hopper asks, examining the row of left-foot socks (relieved to see that none of them are his).

The other boy smirks as he begins putting up the fifth one. "Well, this one is Crackpot's—"

"That new international law prof? Kreckenpol or something?"

"—da, s'right, Crackpot, and here I got Z, big R, little G, and N."

"You mean Nina, innit?" Sember says, looking vaguely worried.

Jitter gives the last sock a short tug and twirls the hammer around, grinning gleefully. "Nope, no sir, it's Near's."

"Oh God," Sember groans, covering his face with his pudgy hands, as Hopper doubles over with laughter.

"Oooh, ice baby gonna have cold toes," H chokes out, practically crying with mirth.

"How you get N? He never leave his door open," Qarri asks skeptically, arms crossed.

"Look at it though. No one else's socks that clean, 'cept Lazlo maybe, and he don' wear socks," Hopper points out.

"Didn't take it from his room," J sniggers.

"The laundry, da? Innit cheating?"

"No, not his room, not the laundry, nope." Jitter fidgets a little. "Nicked it right off his foot."

Q shakes her head, ignoring Sember's look of horror. "He fall asleep in the common room again?"

"You gonna be dead," S says, dismayed.

"Pff, what he gonna do? He's just a lil' niñito." Jitter, who stands head and shoulders above Qarri and Sember (both of whom are bigger than Near,) flicks his fingers dismissively.

"Easy for you, sayin' that," Sember mutters. "You been around longer than him."

"So he's a smartass pequeñito shrimp, so what? What he gonna do, cry to the Warden? Bash me on another test? Serve him right, sticking his foot out like that, it just called me. So then I had to get more, so it wouldn't be lonely."

"S'yeah, S is right. If that really N's you gonna be in deep mud," Qarri says. "Deeper mud, 'cuz Bull's gonna skin you for bucking your head-tuning anyhow. Shrimp or no, he's a mean lil' brat if you piss him off."

The four of them look at the little white sock on the door for a few moments.

"…Nah," says H finally. "He probably won't even care."

"Who won't care about what?" asks Mello, striding down the hall with a book under one arm. He stops short of the little cluster of students, looks at the row of socks tacked to the door, and raises his eyebrows. "You're going to be scrubble if you can't stick to your tuning, J," he says neutrally, half-lidded eyes glittering.

"Tch, Warden won't scrub me over a few socks," Jitter retorts, his nervous giggle resurfacing.

"It has nothing to do with socks. It shows you can't control your own compulsions. Isn't that why Fallon got scrubbed?" Mello replies, a slightly predatory smile curling the corner of his mouth as his gaze travels over the stolen items. "…That's Near's. No one else with feet that small keeps their stuff that clean."

Qarri frowns and Sember sidles back in the direction of his door as the tension in the hallway pulls taut. Like J and H, F was one of the early candidates, and was only removed from the program a few months ago. No one in the older gang was surprised, but they weren't happy about it either-especially Jitter, who was one of his best friends.

"Mine now," Jitter snaps, twitching, as Hopper says darkly, "Well, you'd know about control, da? Keep pickin' rows with N and it's not J that gets scrubbed."

The cool smirk twists abruptly into an animal mask of fury. "He asks for it," Mello bites out, then his hand shoots out to snag the tiny sock on the door.

"Oy!" Immediately a tussle breaks out, Sember and Qarri darting to the safety of their doorways as the older boys struggle over the sock. The sound of tearing fabric shreds the air as the little article of clothing rips free of its nail, and Jitter lets out an outraged cry.

"Whooaa," Hopper says, wedging himself into the fray and shoving the two scrawnier boys apart. "Shut the hell up before Ma Marta thunders down." Being as how he's rather older and a lot bigger, they reluctantly stand down, Jitter clutching the torn sock and nearly convulsing in agitation, and Mello's eyes blazing with anger in his scarlet face.

"Now, see here—" H starts, but Mello pushes past them all (Sember flinching back into his room as he storms by) and stomps off in the direction of his own room.

"Scrubble or not, neither L nor anyone is ever going to have use for a twitchy bugger who goes into seizures at seeing his own shadow," Mello spits over his shoulder, then disappears around the corner.

"Twitchy little bugger, twitchy little bugger," Jitter mutters fast under his breath, knotting the sock in his hands then giggling helplessly. "You know, I hope N bashes him into scrubble dust."

"Not like Near's any better," Sember murmurs.

Qarri snorts. "Tcha. Who is?" she says cynically, then slams her door.

Chapter 3: Cursed

Beckon is getting scrubbed.

It's always a wrench in the social and political fabric of the House, when a letter is erased; the alphabet isn't meant to have gaps. For different students, it can mean the loss of an ally or the eradication of an enemy, another rung closer to the top or another rung gone between them and the bottom, a friend you'll never see again or that buffer of at least I'm not as crazy as _ stripped away. Trading deals need to be rerouted, alliances renegotiated, academic statistics recalculated. It's a variable torn from the equation of daily life, leaving uncertainty in its wake, and reminding everyone at the House that if they can't toe that winding, wire-fine line between somewhat deranged genius and full-out, unmanagable insanity, they'll wash out too.

This time is worse than usual. Usually the House is in chaos when a scrubbing is announced; for Beckon, though, instead of the storm of kids crying or exulting, hurrying to say goodbye or scrambling to be the first to fill the social gap, the very air is brittle and still, a crystal lattice of static electricity that everyone is afraid to break if they speak too loud or move too quickly.

The reason, of course, is that he's the second B.

The younger set, Mello and Near and those that followed them, know the first B as a half-secret everyone has heard, a shadowy legend that was cancerous and inhuman and mysterious and bad, and still haunts the corners and spare rooms of the House like a boggart or a poltergeist. The first C through L (the Dukes, as the older kids like to call themselves, and the Crusties as they're called by all the younger students who are trying uselessly to escape Mello and Near's shadow), the ones who knew B, don't talk about him. For as scientifically-minded and logical as many of the kids are, they're downright superstitious when it comes to B-he's their mythology, the evil ghost in the attic, the beast whose barely audible breath hisses in the dark when you're alone.

Aris, the second A, feels the tension today much more acutely than most of the kids. Because now whispers are skittering through the rooms and halls and wires that the letter itself is cursed—and by extension, so is hers, the letter of B's victim.

It's absurd, really, because Aris was anything but a victim to Beckon; he preferred music and she preferred visual art, but their related interests and different goals, along with the proximity of their birth dates and rebirth into the world of Wammy's, made them natural friends and allies. She's always found him a bit spacey and naïve, if anything. Beckon was a unusually gentle, passive person in the context of the House, and in the end, that was his downfall.

She was actually there, when Beckon snapped. They were in a string quartet together as an elective. During rehearsal, he hit a single note slightly off beat, and their director made a corrective remark—it hadn't even been a rebuke, just a quick little comment, please keep playing—and the boy burst into tears, unable to stop as the rest of the quartet zigzagged to a jagged halt and the director, nonplussed, tried to quiet him and find out what was wrong.

"I hate music," Beckon sobbed out, over and over. "I hate music."

Everyone thought it was just a normal breakdown (those weren't exactly uncommon) until Echo walked in on him teetering nervously on the edge of a chair later that night, a twisted strip of torn sheet wrapped around his neck and fastened to the ceiling fan in his room.

Like an orchid, Aris muses, under the treads of a tank. A beautiful, musical, delicate mind, trampled by the outrageously high demands of this institution.

What she wants to do is stay in her own room, to avoid the whispers and covert scrutiny, but doing so will only encourage rumors (and, Aris thinks in some secret, paranoid compartment of her mind, maybe make them true, though she doesn't think she could ever kill herself; she climbed up on the bathroom counter after showering this morning with a second mirror in hand, examining her skin centimeter by centimeter to make absolutely sure there are no birthmarks or blemishes that she hasn't noticed before that might be an indicator of bad luck or an unhappy destiny—she may have been transplanted in Winchester but she still remembers what her mother taught her of Samudrikashastra, back when she had a long, beautiful name and not a lone, unlucky letter). So she makes sure she is seen out and about, acting as normally as she can under the circumstances.

She'd never admit it, but Aris considers briefly whether or not she should ask Roger to change her alias. That would be stupid, though. The open spots in the alphabet above her, E and F and T, are no luckier—after all, they're open because they got erased too. Taking the next letter in the new alphabet would be as good as a demotion. Everyone would know she's scared, scared of a silly rumor. She can't lose face like that, not in the House, where any public sign of weakness is an invitation for enemies to strike. And anyway, taking a new letter won't change the fact that she's A.

Aris knows, like most of the students, she hasn't got a chance of ever succeeding L, not unless tragedy strikes both Near and Mello. But she's determined (clings to the hope, eyes shut and shaking) that this place is not going to break her like it broke Beckon, cursed letter or not.

 

Notes:

Samudrikashastra: an Indian tradition of divination.

Chapter 4: Itch

Notes:

This one you definitely need to have read at least up through the second chapter of SotF, because this slots right into the plot of that story. Incidentally, these aren't in any sort of thematic or chronological order. This particular ficlet takes place about a month and a half after the New Year that Mello turns eight and Near turns six.

Near wakes abruptly, eyes snapping open and heart pounding in his throat.

Breaking the surface of full consciousness scatters the details of the nightmare like pieces of frosted glass, disjointed and hazy, but it's one he knows he's had many times before. The echoing silence, the empty halls and rooms, and the empty yards and streets, the entire planet empty except for him –

Until a few weeks ago, Near had forgotten about the nightmare, it had been so long since he'd had it; but now it's back. It leaves him feeling unsettled and just the littlest bit panicky, that little bit of a cold itch at the tips of his fingers and in his belly that he gets when things start to go in a way other than what he's expected.

He sits up, shivering a little. He's fallen asleep on the floor again. Feeling around carefully in the near-pitch black cavern of his room, Near finds the computer, blinking at the sudden blue-bright flash of the screen, checks the time. It's nearly four-thirty in the morning. Everyone is asleep (or at least locked up in their rooms) except the kitchen staff, who will be up and about by now to start the gears of the House in motion.

Very little gets by Constance, head chef at the House. Raising six sons single-handedly has a way of sharpening the senses, and a lifetime of running everything from soup kitchens to five-star hotel restaurants only hones them. The instant Near's tiny, tousled head peeks around the doorway, the sturdy old woman has noticed him and is already consulting a mental list of all the breakfast-related tasks a boy his size and age can be put to with a reasonable chance of not accidentally chopping his fingers off or getting stepped on.

She's also getting rather bent out of shape with the powers that be, because this is not the first time this particular child has shown up in the dark chill of predawn in the last few weeks, looking forlorn and pathetic and like he needs something but doesn't believe he'll get it if he asks.

Constance shoots a pursed-lip look at one of her assistants, and he shrugs helplessly in response, making a quick W shape with his fingers. Watari's rules. No exceptions.

Near watches this exchange between the two Grown-Ups with resentment. He doesn't like that they seem to think just because he's little he can't see their sneaky gestures, and he doesn't like that even though he sees it he doesn't know what message is being communicated. He's got a nagging gut feeling that everyone knows a secret he doesn't, something beyond the usual "it's a Grown Up thing" stuff, something that sly questions and eavesdropping have failed thus far to uncover, something that they have been keeping from him ever since Mello started saying that he didn't have time to play with him anymore. Now he acts just like the Dukes, always busy studying and working and worrying about his grades even though he's always done well, too Grown-Up to "waste time with kids" like Near. Near supposes dubiously that that could just be part of Grown Upping, but he can't help but think bitterly that Mello should have waited for him before he decided to Grown Up.

He only has a moment to ponder these injustices before he's swept up into the momentum of the kitchen. Constance doesn't tolerate loitering.

"Up again this time o' the mornin?" The old woman beckons him in, not waiting for a response; she knows by now he won't give one. "Don't stand there poutin', lad, I've got a job for you."

The prospect of being put to work is distasteful, but anything is better than the echoing silence and emptiness of the rest of the House. Near drifts sluggishly in her wake and allows Constance to scrub his hands and hoist him up onto a stool (she puts a box on top, because even on the tall stool the counter is too high for him to reach).

"Take this rosemary and remove the leaves from the stems," the chef instructs, producing what Near figures has to be several bushes' worth of the stuff and piling it in front of him. Taking a sprig of it, she demonstrates, stripping the stem in one smooth motion. "Like this, see? Put them in this bowl."

Near nods, sighing to himself, and picks up one of the smallest stems. Satisfied, Constance bustles off briskly to bark orders at someone else. Drawing one socked foot up onto his box, he starts plucking the needle-like leaves of rosemary one at a time and dropping them listlessly into the bowl.

It's not fun by any stretch of the imagination, but the repetitive hand motions and the sounds of the three or four other people in the kitchen murmuring amongst themselves, clattering dishes quietly, chopping vegetables, and running the faucet on and off makes the cold itchiness go away, as he knew it would. The kitchens are sterilely clean, all brushed stainless steel and gleaming white tile, which Near likes; and it's also warm, almost cozy. The sharp green aroma of rosemary clings to his fingers and the appetizing smells of baking bread and brewing coffee spread through the room as the dark windows lighten to grey.

"Paran, there you are. Pots don't wash themselves, y'know."

Near glances up through his fringe. Looking cross and rubbing at his eyes groggily, Paran shuffles into the kitchen, Constance prodding him toward the big sinks at the back of the kitchen. He must be on morning dish duty in punishment for something or other. Serves him right. Disregarding rules is one thing, but getting caught? Tch. P hasn't been at the House as long as Near, but he's older by a good two years. He ought to know better. Near has already decided he's not very smart.

The older boy aims an openly questioning look at him, which he ignores. He isn't interested in what P might think about why Near is in the kitchen. He's not in trouble. A tiny smile curls the corner of his mouth. He knows where the lines are and how to toe them when the matron is watching. Not like Mello, who until his recent obsession with studying always seemed to have the worst luck in that regard.

…Now, there's a thought.

Winding a bare rosemary stem idly around one finger, Near examines the idea that is unfolding in his mind. It would not be very difficult at all to prod Mello to lash out. Maybe if he gets upset enough, he'll let something slip, and Near will discover what this sudden change in his attitude and personality is really all about—what made him decide to Grown Up so suddenly.

"How are things going over here?" Constance says, coming to inspect his (lack of) progress. Over the last half hour he's only gotten through three sprigs of rosemary. Looking up, Near shrugs.

"So I see," the old woman says, shaking her head. "Here, lad." He accepts the scone she offers him (it's oven-warm in his hands and crusty-soft, curranty and sweet) and patiently allows her to catch him under the arms and set him back on the ground. Then Constance leans down as though she intends to try to give him a hug, and while being picked up and moved around like some kind of doll can be excused for practical reasons, Near definitely can't think of a reason why this kind of interaction is necessary, so he steps back to avoid the encircling arms.

"Thank you," he says almost inaudibly and not meeting her eyes, then turns and to wander out. Paran glances up from the sudsy, pan-filled sink as he passes, clearly envious and out of sorts; Near makes sure to return the look with a smirk.

He's feeling a lot better than he was when he woke up. He wonders if Mello is up yet.

Chapter 5: Box Seats

Confrontation is a little more effort than Matt is willing to exert. When he finally decides the intermittent popping sounds from Crash's side of their shared wall probably won't be stopping any time soon, his first solution is to put on his headphones. When the volume is turned up so high he's starting to get a migraine, he tries playing one trance mix on the speakers and a different one on the headphones to create a more effective wall of white noise. When even that doesn't mask the sound, and the popping is joined by a shrill whirring, Matt gives up on trying to focus on his kernel-programming homework and tries to zone out with a game that doesn't take much concentration, hoping the racket will just sort of wash over him. It doesn't.

Shrugging to himself, Matt reflects that he's starting to crave a cigarette anyway, so he shoves a half-full pack into his back pocket, checks the locks on his door, and climbs out the window. With one foot on the sill and the other wedged in a gap where he knocked out a brick for this purpose, he levers himself up and over the gutter.

Devon is already on the roof, sitting cross-legged on a folded sheet. D, who has the misfortune of living on the other side of Crash's room, is not so easy-going. He had tried kicking the adjoining wall a few times, without response, then stormed out into the hall to tap, then knock, then bang on the door. When the noise finally paused long enough for him to demand that it stop indefinitely, the only reply was,

"Shuddup, I tryin'a work!"

"So am I!" D had retorted, but it was drowned out by another cracking pop.

"One'a these days, that bitch gonna blow alla this place sky high," he gripes, tapping the end of his own cigarette carefully away from his sheet and wrinkling his nose in disapproval as Matt sprawls out right on the dirty, slightly rain-damp roof.

"Sounds fun," Matt says, cupping a gloved hand around the lighter to protect it from the late evening breeze.

"If by 'fun', you mean 'not fun'." A few strands of hair blow across Devon's forehead, and he quickly smooths them back into place, frowning.

Grunting noncommittally in response, Matt tilts his head back and lets out a long stream of smoke. Then they both flinch as a particularly loud pop rattles the window.

"Rewind that," D mutters. "She blow us all up, if Ma Marta don' bump her first."

"If you say so."

"Honestly, M. You too tolerant of all this blakabaka." The other boy rolls his eyes theatrically. "Guess that's no surprise, you hang out with Mello, after all."

Matt shrugs. This one-sided conversation is boring him, but the pops from below are growing progressively louder, and he's beginning to think D might be right about Crash blowing them all to kingdom come. "S'not that bad."

"Phhhf, he is that bad," D sniffs. "He prolly get you blowed up without any of this warning sounds."

"He not boring," M says, as though that settles the matter (which for Matt, it does).

He is rescued from Devon's inevitable condescending reply by a muffled BANG from below, followed quickly by the shhhhk of the window being shoved open, a giant puff of pale smoke billowing over the edge of the roof, and Crash's coughing as she sticks her head out into the fresh night air. Matt laughs so hard he ends up choking on a lungful of cigarette smoke and joining in her hacking fit. D sighs long-sufferingly.

"Planning the Apocalypse in there, little C?" Matt calls out.

"Oh, 'ello," Crash says (a little hoarsely), poking her head up over the edge. Her fringe and eyebrows are a bit singed, and the red outline of her safety goggles stands out vividly on her cheeks and forehead even in the dark. "Nah, just term project. Apocalypse later."

"For Waddell, da?" Matt grins appreciatively. "Don't sound like the kinda project he ask for."

"Bleh. Waddle cuz 'e got a stick up 'is butt," says Crash, propping her elbows up on the gutter. "This wake 'im up. If I get it right, anyways. Not quite there yet. Eh." She runs an exploratory finger over what's left of her eyebrow, going momentarily cross-eyed. "Oopsa."

"You lookin' like a barbarian," D tells her loftily, smoothing his glossy black locks again.

"You lookin' like a baboon butt," C returns, picking a scrap of recently exploded something out of her own hair and examining it.

"Well, you—" Devon starts, and Matt cuts him off lazily. "Make out or shut up."

"'e wouldn' like that, I'd mess up 'is pretty 'air and 'e'd 'ave to spend all that extra time at the mirror fixin' it," Crash points out, and Devon scowls, flushing slightly. "Already takes what, ten kazillion years in the bathroom alla every morning. We'd never see him no more."

"Nothing wrong with taking care of your appearance," he says with dignity. "Not that it would make a difference for you."

"You such a girl."

They're interrupted by pounding from inside.

"Crash! Young lady, come open zis door before I—"

Devon raises his eyebrows coolly, and Matt lounges back, grinning, to enjoy the show that's about to play out.

"I comin', Marta, 'ave some patience, I tryin'a observe proper safety procedure 'ere!" Crash bellows back, then rolls her eyes at the boys. "Sorry, can't play no more, Momma's callin' for dinner."

"Sound more like dishes to me," D says smugly. "At least a week in the pit."

"Go sit on a spike, D," C says sweetly, salutes, and disappears.

The two boys smoke in silence, listening with interest from their safe perch as Marta's scolding and Crash's outrageous explanations and excuses ring out the window below. It's pleasantly cool, the stars are starting to come out, Devon has finally shut up, and the soft rustling of the trees provides an entertainingly incongruous backdrop to the yelling.

Crossing his arms behind his head, Matt relaxes and lets it all just wash over him.

Chapter 6: Vigil

Notes:

This one takes place the night after the A/B fiasco.

After all the chaos and horror and tumbling confusion of the last 24 hours, the dark velvet silence of another night feels like a grave.

Usually watching the Weather Channel helps Hopper relax. Tonight it doesn't, so he tries studying to keep his mind occupied. It's futile. He keeps losing his place in his reading, his overdeveloped brain wandering away from the matter of projectile physics and into darker imaginings of what has been done with Alt's body—whether he has already been packed away beneath damp black soil, or is still lying blue and waxy somewhere in the House…one of the labs, perhaps, or the groundskeeper's shed.

Catching himself dazing into another morbid reverie, he finally gives up. Classes are probably going to be canceled for a few days anyway, and no one else is in much of a state to study either. Watari arrived late in the afternoon to start putting things back in order but his mere presence can't fix what happened. The brass are shell-shocked. The manager's been sacked. Concord and Dex are going to be in the infirmary for a couple days at least. Jitter was the first to have a nervous breakdown. Hopper's sure he won't be the last.

Sneaking down to the infirmary to see them, he tells himself, isn't a sign of weakness. He's going to go because they're probably scared and upset. The fact that he is too is unrelated. He checks the sky and the radar one more time (both are clear), and slips out, locking the door behind him.

The hall lights are on and if he is still, he can hear the muffled voices and footsteps of the brass moving about downstairs. He eases along slowly, so as not to alert them to the sound of creaking floorboards. No one will scold him for being up past curfew, not tonight, but if he has to sit through yet another session with the new head-shrinker asking if he wants to talk about his feelings he really is going to snap.

He's concentrating so hard on moving quietly that he can clearly hear the soft sound of crying as he passes Linda's door.

Hopper taps lightly on the door and opens it. Linda, the youngest of all of them, immediately turns her back to him, wiping at her eyes and cheeks quickly as though she can hide the tears and red blotchiness.

H has never seen her cry before. It strikes him for the first time that if his little sisters were still alive, Lin would be the same age as the third eldest. That thought is not particularly welcome in his present state of mind, so he examines the paintings on the wall as though they interest him while she attempts to compose herself.

"I gonna visit C and D," Hopper tells a large watercolor of a gazebo overlooking a lily pond. "Make sure they ok."

"Ok," Linda says shakily, still scrubbing uselessly at her eyes as she rolls off the bed. Despite her efforts fresh tears track down her cheeks.

What the hell, Hopper thinks, after all, we were all something before we were letters, and A is dead. We can all be rivals later. So he picks her up and carries her, like he used to carry Rebecca and Naomi when they got tired of walking, and damn he misses them as Linda cries into his shoulder.

Quiet murmurs hush immediately as he pushes open the door to the infirmary.

"It's just Hop," Dex whispers, and they stop pretending to be asleep.

Unsurprisingly, it looks like Even was having trouble sleeping too; she's sitting at the foot of Concord's bed, her face wan and exhausted in the moon-washed dim of the room. Jitter's here as well, in a bed of his own. Evidently they couldn't calm him and Verity resorted to putting him in a rolly-wrap. Judging by how little he's shifting around, he's probably been sedated.

"How's about a rolly-wrap?" he asks Linda, who is showing no sign that she wants to let go, and she nods shame-facedly. None of them ever wants to admit it, but few things feel as safe and comforting as a couple hours securely cocooned in a blanket.

E gets up to help, and together they wind a sheet from one of the spare beds around the smaller girl, pinning her arms and legs. "You all patched?" Hopper asks C and D while they work. If they're still here at the House infirmary and not the Winchester hospital, he thinks, they must not be hurt too bad

(though it looked awful, B's haphazard slashing and jabbing with that stolen kitchen knife, the way he laughed when Concord stared down at her bloody nightshirt like she couldn't process what had happened)

"I won. Fifteen stitches to C's twelve," Dex says, and he sounds like he's trying to be funny and wishes as soon as it comes out of his mouth that he hadn't bothered.

"We all fall down," Jitter mumbles. "Ashes and posies."

"No one else gonna die, J," Dex tells him firmly.

"You don't know that," says E.

"I'm cold," J whispers.

"Don't leave me alone," Linda says as they start to tuck her into a bed. She seems a little calmer now, in the restricting embrace of the rolly-wrap, but she struggles to sit up.

"Bring her over here," Dex says. "We can push the beds together."

"You stay put, don't wanna rip them stitches," H tells C as she starts to get up to help. Hopper and Even pick Linda up and settle her in next to Concord, then freeze as the infirmary door creaks open.

It's Gao this time, looking just as terrible as all of them feel. He looks around at the group and observes, "Sleepover shi ma?"

"Come join the party," Jitter giggles, shifting restlessly in his rolly-wrap. "It's cold."

"Help me move them beds," says H. The three beds are rolled together to form one wide mattress, the legs bound together with some athletic tape that G nicks from the first aid cabinet. After another quick check out the window (the sky is still clear) and some hesitation, Hopper crawls in between E and J.

He hasn't been this physically or emotionally close to other people since before he had a letter. Warm bodies press close on either side and the drowsy sounds of fabric shifting and breathing and nearly silent crying reminds him more than ever of family. Out of nowhere he wonders what happened to the farm, if the fields are still being plowed and planted, if the barn is still standing, if anyone ever rebuilt the house.

Later, when things go back to normal, they all might regret this show of vulnerability, but Hopper has a feeling things will never go back to the way they were. It all—letters, the House, L—it can't be like it was again. He is reminded of the sports of ancient civilizations, where the losing team was sacrificed to the gods. Before, it was exciting. They were kids that could outsmart the system, and if they proved that they were the best, one of them would be Chosen to save the world and show that any evil and any opponent could be conquered by their brilliant intellects and righteous justice. Now...

Two days ago they were gods, Hopper thinks, but now they've learned they're not immortal.

"This game isn't fun anymore," E whispers, echoing his thoughts.

"It gonna be ok," Dex hushes her. "L gonna catch him and make him pay."

Even's body trembles; she might be crying. "It cuz of L that Alt's dead," she says softly. "You ever think maybe he the bad one?"

"…No," G says finally, when nobody else replies. "L not bad. Maybe not good either. But if there was no L, where are we?"

On the streets, Hopper answers silently, in foster homes, orphanages. Probably mental institutions, some of us. Outside with the wormbait.

"There's bad people everywhere," he says out loud. "It could have happened anywhere. People been killing each other long time before B was around. Otherwise there wouldn't be an L."

"All the king's horses and all the king's men can't fix him again," Jitter says to himself.

No one answers. Eventually Hopper dozes off into uneasy dreams about storm-flattened alfalfa fields and kitchen knives and children chasing monsters.

 

Notes:

AN: regarding rolly-wraps - this is for real, though they're not called that. Being wrapped up tightly in a blanket has been shown to be soothing to babies and people with insomnia or sensory integration problems.

shi ma? - (Mandarin) Is it?/Is that what this is?

Chapter 7: Inches

Jeffrey Timmons would give almost anything to see his parents.

It's weird. Two weeks ago he wouldn't have believed it. His mother was always traveling for work, selling fancy lotions and facial creams, and his dad…well, it was obvious that his dad thought he was a freak.

Bad enough that the kids at school treated him like alien with an infectious disease (which made no sense; they were the ones who were ignorant and strange and incurious), but his father was on a mission to fix him, always finding new "special" tutors and psychological tests, tedious and never-ending. Every time his father caught him with the ruler, he would frown and get that frustrated look, that look asked where he had gone wrong to end up with a son like him.

If you asked Jeffrey (which no one ever did) his parents were the ones with the problems, sleep-walking through a marriage that even their nine-year-old son could see had been crushed by the combined weight of her ambition and his perfectionism years ago, too scared to leave each other and too proud to honestly try to make it work. His mom found a way to escape and his dad projected his issues onto his son.

No, a few weeks ago he would have jumped at a chance to escape his family.

They're gone now, though, and he'll never see them again. Everything is gone, even the name Jeffrey Timmons, which he's been told not to use anymore. The only remotely familiar thing is the tape measure he managed to swipe. The weight of it in his pocket is a small comfort as he is whirled through strange cars and planes and buildings by strange people, whirls through more tests like the ones his dad used to make him take, more cars and buildings, and then a study where a tired-looking old man tells him he's reached the end of the whirling and that if he works hard and excels in his studies, he might inherit the title of the greatest detective on earth.

By this point he's long past the limit of new unmeasured spaces he can handle in a day. Most of what he's told is tuned out as white noise while he fingers the edges of the tape measure and waits numbly for the time that he can use it.

When the tired old man and the big Russian woman are done talking at him, he is shown a room that he is told is his (whoever he is, since he's not Jeffrey anymore, he has a new name that fits like new Sunday shoes and he isn't sure he likes it but as usual no one has asked him) and is left alone to sort himself out.

Finally.

First he measures the room itself, side to side to side and top to bottom; then every door and doorframe, the diameter of the doorknobs, the distance between the doorknob and every edge of the door, the window and each pane and the windowframe and sill, then every splinter of furniture and the height of the shelves and hanger pole in the closet and every measurement he can think of on every single object in the room, from the computer to the sheets to the ceiling fan to the electric sockets; he writes them all down in neat columns and then calculates volumes and angles and distances until he knows this space and how he fits in it.

Then he crawls into bed fully clothed with the lights still on, pulls the sheets over his head, and mentally recalculates all those measurements again and again and again.

He doesn't realize he's fallen asleep until he's abruptly woken by hands seizing his wrists and ankles and thick fabric being pulled tight over his face.

At first he is too startled to struggle. Then he decides to play dead, because there are at least three of them, and struggling is unlikely to help. It's not long, just a quick trip down the hall, and they set him down again and remove the fabric from his face. It makes no difference, because it's pitch black.

"English?" a voice whispers in his ear.

"I speak English," he says, "but I'm not English, I'm—"

A hand claps over his mouth before he can finish the sentence. "Never tell where you from. You in the House now. Outside doesn't matter no more."

They're kids' voices. He hasn't met any of the other students yet, though he's had glimpses of them through cracked doorways. He's never much liked kids his own age, who don't understand anything and call him names and leave him out of their games. If what the tired old man said was true, these kids won't be like those kids. Under the circumstances, though, he's not convinced different necessarily means better, and a cold little finger of fear tickles the back of his neck.

The hand leaves his mouth. There is a clattering of computer keys in the darkness, and the dim glow of a monitor washes the faces of the children ringed around him with its eerie light. He can't see the walls in the dark, can't guess at the size of the room. His chest feels tight, and he anxiously rubs the corner of the tape measure still in his pocket. "What do you want?"

"To make this fast so we can get back to sleep," says the girl sitting across from him, who looks vaguely Middle Eastern but has a British accent. "My letter Q for Qarri."

"R for Rom," says the boy with dark curly hair, and the small Asian girl is "X for Xie".

"We draw the short sticks so we your welcome committee, fishie. You know your letter?" says Qarri.

"My name…my letter is Zane. Z. Z for Zane."

"Congratulations. You the last letter in our alphabet," says X for Xie.

He doesn't like having a letter and not a name. It feels like a lie. He wants his old name back. He wants to pull the tape measure out of his pocket and clutch it in his hands. He wants to know how far away the walls and ceiling are, needs to know how tall Q and X and R stand, because letters tell him exactly nothing about them.

"No cry. Don't let no one see you cry," R for Rom admonishes him.

"New kiddies get three days slack, almost anyone gonna help you screw you head on straight. After that, you tie you own shoes. Warden Roger explain what this House for, da?"

He's having a little bit of trouble following what Q is saying. She talks faster than anyone he's ever met. "Erm…he said that they are looking for a replacement to the detective L."

"Right," says the girl, and there are quick smirks and stifled snickers. "Well forget all that blakabaka. We tell you the House rules. First one: the brass gonna lie if they think they get away with it, an' don't tell us nothing if they don't."

'Warden' Roger told him a lot of rules, like no running in the halls and no hitting, but he failed to mention any of these. They're less like rules and more like a verbal tour of this bizarre place.

For instance, teasing about others' therapy is taboo. "Everybody here a genius, everybody got they own crazy. Alla everybody gotta get they head tuned," Q says. "You don't poke about tuning and nobody poke you back."

They explain about the Crusties (not to be antagonized) and the Twins (best avoided).

"M and N aren't actually twins," R interjects. "But suppose'ly they brought together, see? But don't you call them Twins to their face or M probl'y kill you dead."

And speaking of the Twins,

"They the Warden's favorite. If one'a them isn't picked for L, you can scrub my letter," X mutters.

"Then why does—then why anyone want to stay?"

Q, R, and X exchange glances.

"Not supposed to talk about when we were Outside," Qarri finally says, leaning forward and lowering her voice confidentially. "But you on slack days, fishie, so I tell you. Maybe Outside there were some wormbaits that you liked, you family or friends, maybe. Maybe not. But were you one'a them?"

"No," Rom and Xie answer for him. Rom continues, "The wormbait think we're freaks. 'Oooh, this liddle kid he so smart, so special', they say, but really they thinkin' 'scary, sick in the head, gotta fix 'em up'. And they lie but you know better, cuz you are smart."

"In the House, everybody crazy smart," Xie says. "Always someone crazier than you. Everybody gets it. You can play games and not hafta hold back cuz you might get called freak. Nobody treat you like a bitty baby that don't understand."

He digests this for a moment, then reaches hesitantly into his pocket, pulls out the tape measure. Turns it over in his hands, taps each corner once then measures his palms while he thinks. The other three watch, but don't seem to think anything of it.

"So if they go in alphabetical order and I'm Z, there are—there only 26 of us?"

Their faces darken in the dim light. "No," says Qarri. "Only 23. A, B, and E all gone."

"Gone?"

"Gone. Scrubbed," says Xie, when Q doesn't answer.

"What's that mean, scrubbed?" That little cold finger of fear is back, tracing his spine. For the first time, the other three letters look uneasy.

"Everybody got their crazy, but gotta keep it tuned. If the crazy control you, your letter get scrubbed. Erased. Back to the Outside," Qarri says.

His chest contracts, and he holds tightly to the tape measure. It's all rather a lot to take in, and his parents are dead and his name is gone. But he knows the exact dimensions of his room, and though he hardly knows the three letters in front of him, he finds that he feels more of a kinship with them than any of the kids at his old school. There's a certain look in their eyes, a tension in the way they hold themselves—they're watching, and thinking, calculating and measuring.

They're like him.

"Can I measure you height?" he tests.

"What you gonna use that information for?" Rom asks, but he doesn't sound creeped out, just suspicious.

"I just need to know how tall you are."

Qarri shrugs carelessly, and they all stand up.

"Don't touch," Xie warns, flinching a little as he pulls the tape measure straight and holds it by her head, squinting at the little numbers in the dim light. None of them asks why they're doing this, though Qarri does tell him to hurry it up so they can all go back to bed as he's taking a second measurement to double-check. Q, R, and X are 52.6, 54.0, and 46.3 inches tall respectively.

He's still a bit numb and overwhelmed, but Z is starting to think he would give almost anything not to be scrubbed.

Chapter 8: Drive

"Mello. Mello."

He's so, so tired; sleep drags at him like dust-clogged cobwebs and his head and arms feel like they haven't moved in a hundred years. Someone is tapping insistent fingers on the desk

(they're all so well trained, the brass monkeys of the House, they're not to touch any of the children red-flagged as having been abused without appropriate warning and/or permission)

and it knocks insistently at his ear where it's pressed to the oak desktop.

"Mello, wake up. If you want to sleep, you'll be far more comfortable in bed."

"No," he mumbles, propping his elbows up and forcing his gaze back on the computer screen. "I'm not sleeping. I'm studying."

"The computer fell asleep fifteen minutes after you did," says Addison, the House librarian. Even as he's saying it slowly occurs to Mello that what he's looking at is not a journal article comparing studies on sociopathic behavior, but a screen saver.

Mello's ears heat, and he can practically hear the librarian silently judging him for his weakness, despite how well he hides it behind that tackily painted façade of concern.

"Mello, you've been in here for seven hours. It's long past curfew," Addison says gently

(scornfully)

"I'm certain you're well prepared for the psych exam. Go to bed."

"I'm not done studying," Mello snaps, jiggling the mouse so that the screen saver disappears and the article comes back up. It's an essay test, and you can never ever be too ready for an essay test; there's always some tiny detail that could have been added, some example that would better illustrate a point. Details and examples that Near selects and includes with infallible instinct, and which Mello always fails to handle perfectly. His gaze flicks up automatically to see how much farther he has to read. He's on page 12 of 85. He wants to cry.

"Tell you what. Why don't I print this off for you, you can take it back to your room and finish reading it when you're a little more rested."

"The exam is first thing in the morning," Mello says, scanning the top paragraph on the page. It seems vaguely familiar. He thinks he's read it already. No, he knows he's read it already. He skips down the page until he finds a bit that he doesn't recognize.

"Mello." The screen suddenly goes black; the librarian has turned off the monitor. Outraged, Mello turns on him.

"What, am I inconveniencing you here? I'm just trying to study! It's a pretty typical activity in libraries, I should think you'd be familiar with it—"

"You've been dozing off and on for the last forty minutes," Addison says patiently

(patronizingly)

"I'm sure you'll perform much better on the test if you get some proper sleep beforehand."

Mello glowers at the man through his fringe. Addison looks nothing at all like his father; he's tall and storkish with round spectacles and a shock of hair that's silvering even though he's not that old, where Rodrick Keehl was broad-shouldered and broad-jawed, with heavy-knuckled paws built for cuffing people around and mean little blue eyes that burned through the thatch of his hair. Mello doubts this pasty scholar has ever hit another person in his life. He doubts he would even know how. He'd probably end up hurting his hand if he tried. Somehow, though, when Mello imagines what the librarian is thinking right now, it's Rodrick's voice that he hears.

It doesn't matter how long you study, the spectacled eyes seem to be saying. It still won't be good enough. You might as well give up.

Straightening his back, Mello stares back, willing himself to be alert and awake. "I'm fine," he says coolly.

With a poorly suppressed sigh and a fixed smile, Addison gives up.

"If you say so," he says, as Mello switches the monitor back on. "Shall I call down to the kitchens to get you something to eat, at least?"

"No," says Mello curtly. Resentment scalds his veins, making his ears burn scarlet and helping him focus. He feels awake now—leaden and scaly-eyed, but awake. "I don't need anything."

Twenty minutes later the librarian comes back, quietly setting a steaming cup of hot chocolate with marshmallows at his elbow. It smells heavenly. Mello pretends it isn't there, and keeps reading.

 

Chapter 9: Fix

It's like holding back a sneeze. Except with his whole body. He knows better than to try to quash it down—Bull rags on and on about that, how if he would practice the relaxation techniques he's been taught it will train his brain and muscles and the tic will lessen but it's just not that easy to relax like that when what he feels like doing is leaping up and ricocheting off the walls and the more he thinks about how he's supposed to be relaxing the more he tenses up and the more it builds and then it crests and he twitches and then can relax a little and he wants to scream, it's so frustrating, but instead of screaming Jitter lets out a strained giggle.

Usually the twitch is not as bad as it is tonight but the history final exam is tomorrow and Jitter knows he understands all the material and remembers all the names and dates and documents but somehow establishing that bridge between what's stored in his head and that blank space on the paper almost always seems to end in disaster. Bridge fails. Floods ensue. Crops destroyed, harvest fails, population starves. No, the metaphor doesn't hold. Bridges, not dams. Dead end road. Trade rerouted. All roads lead to Rome only as long as the roads are intact.

"No mail from Africa for Caesar," is his final muttered conclusion. Twitch.

"Caesar prob'ly never read him own mail anyhow," Fallon responds dully. "He prob'ly got a secretary."

Jitter giggles a little at the mental image that immediately springs to mind of Caligula's advisor Incitatus sitting at a desk, typing busily away. However, despite the nanosecond of distraction provided by the amusing idea of a horse attempting to use a keyboard, F's reassurance is pretty unhelpful because regardless of what Rome's situation was when the roads were down Jitter can't delegate the history exam to someone else—quite the contrary, everyone else is fighting to outscore everyone else and this is one area that he knows is hardly worth the stress and hysteria that will ensue because regardless of the thoroughness of his actual crystallized knowledge, his own physiology and psychopathology hamstring his horse right out of the gate. Twitch. He's never understood the impulse behind gambling on horse races, any more than he understands how sitting still for two hours and making marks in memorized patterns with a piece of graphite encased in wood on a bit of dried tree pulp tells anyone about his knowledge of the myriad and complex social, political, and economic variables that made up the gem-wire-thread tangle of the World Wars or how lying on his back thinking about stupid things like drops of water falling in pools is going to have any effect on this bloody twitch.

Fallon watches lifelessly from where he's sprawled on the floor as J finally gives in to the pressure that's been crushing his limbs for nearly twenty whole unbearable seconds and jumps up again, pacing frantically from wall to wall. It's after curfew and F should technically be in his own room but Ma Marta never fusses too bad unless they're causing a racket or larking around in the halls and it's not like they're losing sleep anyway. The only way Jitter figures he's going to spend any time not wide awake between now and the history exam is if he's either sedated or thunked over the head with something heavy, and the lamotrigine that Bull recently prescribed for Fallon apparently gives him insomnia on top of the zits and general feeling of shittiness.

With a sigh that sounds like it was wrenched agonizingly from the depths of his soul or something similarly melodramatic, F flops an arm over to pick through the bulky textbooks embedded in one of the many piles of junk strewn about the floor. "Algebra, trig or calc?"

"Trig, trig trig trig," Jitter says, relieved and eager and more than a little ashamed that his agitation is so obvious, and he probably wouldn't even be able to bear accepting Fallon's help if it weren't for the fact that F is on mood stabilizers and he's not anymore and surely surely that means on some level that is somehow meaningful to the brass that Jitter isn't the craziest one in the House, and because F is doing this more do distract himself from how lousy he feels than out of any sense of altruism, not to mention that J's restlessness is probably annoying him. And trigonometry is Jitter's absolute favorite, he loves triangles and ratios and the tip and balance and tension of points and lines, give and take and lean and pull; perhaps he should point that out to Bull, that a battery of math problems is a far more effective relaxant than stupid drops falling in stupid pools and whatever other worthless garbage got stuffed into her stupid yuppie head in grad school. Twitch.

"Mk…uh…." F opens the textbook to a random page. "One plus cosecant x all over cosecant x."

"Sine x, sine x," Jitter says immediately. "Too easy, pick a harder one. Pick an equation."

With another sigh, the other boy flips listlessly through the book. "'K. X between zero and two pi. Two x sine x equals x."

"Zero or pi over six or five pi over six." He makes a frenzied gesture with one hand. "Harder one."

Fallon humors him for nearly half an hour, by which point J is almost calm enough to sit down but he's supposed to push his limits so he does sit down and F tosses the book aside, draping his arm over his eyes and releasing the next of his seemingly endless supply of tortured sighs.

He's a lot more fun when he's manic, Jitter thinks, then instantly feels a little bad for thinking it because not so awful long ago Bull had him on pills too and he hated hated hated twitch the bloody little things and how tired and sick and irritable they made him feel and how they reminded him that he was somehow different and damaged and unable to be properly human without help so he almost apologizes then remembers he only thought it, didn't say it, and before that thought is quite over he thinks he should thank F for the trig problems and gets sidetracked thinking about thank-you cards and fruit baskets, isn't that a weird tradition, if someone gives back a gift in exchange for a gift is it really a gift and a thank-you or is it just a gift exchange with some time delay and since his mind was prepared a millisecond ago to say something but he's lost track of what it was what comes out at the end of it all is a nervous giggle.

"J," Fallon says, and he sounds exhausted, and Jitter can't really relate because he feels like he's going to explode out of his skin any second, with lightning snapping from his fingertips and static spewing from his mouth. The other boy almost cringes as he asks quietly, "Do they help? Is it…do you think they're making a difference?"

Jitter has a million answers and none of them seem like the right thing to say.

Chapter 10: Baby

The volume of the whispering two tables away is turned up ten notches the instant Hopper leaves the library study room. It prickles at Linda's concentration, distracting her from the algebra word problems she's struggling through. She almost—almost—regrets telling H that she doesn't need help, if only because the older boy's presence kept the noise level down to a respectful level.

Admittedly, Crash and Wiley have been murmuring together over their chemistry lab report for quite a while now, and Linda's focus on math was tenuous in the first place. But Hopper's cheerful offer of help has her feeling a little short-tempered, because he extended it freely, even served it up with a warm smile as though she were a favorite younger sibling and not a competitor. She wouldn't have been surprised if he had ruffled her hair to top it all off. You just don't do that in the House, offering help for nothing, unless you have something to gain, or unless you're not taking that person seriously enough to worry that your assistance might give them an edge over you.

And Hopper's not the only one. Concord has offered in that reluctant, deer-in-headlights way of hers to listen when Linda has been stressed or out of sorts, Kae has offered her advice about boys even though she's not that interested in them yet, and even Jitter has offered to help her with math a dozen times despite the fact that he's just as terrible at explaining things as she is at algebra and he always spends half the impromptu lesson staring at her with that comical cock-eyed look of bewilderment that says he honestly doesn't get what all the fuss is about, because these equations are perfectly clear, aren't they? Which really doesn't help.

What it comes down to is that among the Dukes, she's the baby.

And even the littler kids that came after the Twins, the late letters and the lower-case alphabet, seem to think so. True, some of them are as old as she is, but still. She's been here longer, and that should give her seniority. Nobody would dare make as much racket as W and little C are currently making if it were Dex and Hopper and Concord sitting here instead of Linda.

She glowers silently at the pair over her textbook. Either Crash has enough respect for Addison and Kendall that she's left the omnipresent matchbox behind or it's already been confiscated by one of the librarians, but even without the sharp scratching of matches being lit one after the other she manages to be annoying, tapping out a rapid tattoo on the table with her pencil. Wiley, the more introverted of the pair, isn't any better. With one hand she's idly scribbling down notations in the margins of the lab book but with the other she's holding her braid, the end of which is in her mouth. She bites her nails too, Linda knows, and she finds both habits disgusting. They're jabbering at each other half in English and half in French about their lab results (easily applying the very algebraic fundamentals that Linda is grappling with at the moment), not bothering at all anymore to keep their voices down, and it's driving her mad.

Finally she snaps. "Knock off that tapping, lil' C! And stop chewin' you hair, Wiley, that so gross."

Wiley just looks over her shoulder with wide, incredulous eyes (still gnawing on her braid), but Crash scoffs, snatching up another pencil and rapping out a quick drumbeat on the table. "'Oo put you in charge, eh? If you buggin' go work somewhere else."

"Issa library, I should be able'a study in here without this chit-chit-chit like a pack'a daft finches!"

"Oooofa, don't we got twisty knickers now. We not so chit-chit that Addison kickin' us out, so what you cryin' about? Quack off, bossy britches," Crash shoots back, grinning.

Linda regrets saying anything after all; little C enjoys nothing more than a bit flippant bickering, except maybe setting things on fire, and now she's getting flustered and it's showing. She just wants to do her algebra in peace. Is a little quiet and a bit of respect too much to ask? Now of course if she backs down it will be just that, backing down, and if she leaves it will be backing down, and if she keeps arguing she's not going to accomplish anything but entertain the brat. And eventually she'll end up backing down anyway because Crash could happily sit here batting petty insults for a zillion years.

For a few seconds Linda just hates everyone and wishes they would all leave her alone. Scowling, she hunches back over her wretched algebra homework. Whatever. She'll just pretend it never happened.

The younger girls aren't about to let it lie, though; she's barely reread the problem before a well-aimed rubber band zips right over the page and clips her wrist. "But bon," Crash whispers to Wiley, and they snicker quietly.

Linda closes her eyes and slowly clenches her jaw as a second flicked band skitters across her homework. She's backed herself into a corner now. If she retaliates then they've succeeded in getting to her. If she doesn't then she's chicken. And the longer it takes her to do something—

"Hey, Lin. Lil' C. W." says Dex, shambling into the study room. "Mind if I sit here?" With a resounding thud he drops a stack of ancient legal books onto the table, pulls out the chair across from her, flips it around and sits on it backward. Rubbing his short, spiky hair vigorously, the older boy (who is now between Linda and the other two girls) regards the large, flaking volumes with a complete lack of excitement. "Maths again, huh? Wanna swap? This gotta be the boring-est paper I ever gotta write."

She throws a glance over his shoulder at Crash and Wiley. W is chewing on her fingernail but they're murmuring quietly again, frowning over their lab report. The pencil tapping has stopped entirely.

"Nah," Linda mumbles, keeping her head down so D won't read the resentment on her face. "I got this handled."

 

Chapter 11: Santa Claus

"It's not about justice," says the L-blazoned screen, and it's just like when Sember first realized that Santa Claus wasn't real, but so much worse, because Christmas Eve is just one night out of the year but he's been living in this fairytale for nearly four months.

Actually, maybe a better analogy would be if he was told that Batman and Superman and Spider-Man were all in it because they just liked punching people. He feels betrayed and disillusioned and even the littlest bit sick. L, the L, the solver of impossible crimes and rescuer of the downtrodden, the sword of justice itself against the evil world of crime, doesn't do it because it's right, but because he's bored?

S may only be eight, but he has a pretty firm idea of what he thinks is right and what is wrong. Helping people is right, and hurting people is wrong. He's not so sure about how L's way of doing things fits in.

Why is he even here? Sember wonders.

He's depressed. It's three days later and it's still all he can think about. He really wants to talk to someone about L, but any time he says anything to Bull he feels like it's less of a conversation and more of a performance that she is analyzing and taking meticulous notes on whenever he doesn't get the script right. And the other kids…well, he'd like very much to talk to them. They're all really smart, and they're fascinating to listen to, and they're in the same position he is. Sember's only been here a few months, though, and though he's forced himself to talk to a few of them, the prospect of approaching any of the handful he's exchanged shy 'good morning's with over breakfast and asking if they want to have a heart-to-heart about the purpose of their lives at the House is downright petrifying.

So instead he drags his blue blanket down to the common room and curls up in the windowseat by himself. It's quiet in there; the programming class meets this time of day, and a lot of the kids are taking it. Rom and Over are sprawled on the couch with their English dictionaries (neither of them are native speakers, but they're picking it up quickly) and holding a stilted but painstakingly grammatical debate over the literary qualities of Dostoyevsky, and Near is hunched in his usual spot on the floor, building some kind of wacky something-or-other of Tinkertoys. Hiding in his safe little fortress of fabric, Sember watches them out of the corner of his eye. A very tiny, daring part of him wishes that one of them would notice that he's troubled and ask what's wrong, but he knows he'd freeze up and just sit there stammering if they actually did.

After a while, Rom and Over leave, and he's left in the room with just Near. So S watches him instead.

He's awfully small, with tiny little fingers and eyes that are too big for his head, though Sember knows Near is the same age he is. He also knows that, like him, Near tends to lurk near of groups of people, close by but not really reaching out to anyone except Mello, who's never very nice to him. He's bold enough during class debates, on the other hand…. It doesn't seem like the same crippling fear that seizes Sember at the thought of talking to others affects N, but he's definitely isolated, and maybe a little shy, even. Sember finds himself feeling sympathetic toward the other boy, even wanting a little to talk to him. Neither of them has friends, but it's not because Sember doesn't want any. The same must be true of Near.

Deciding to speak up is a lot easier than following through.

That tense, cold-strap feeling tightens over his lungs. What if Near tells him to leave him alone? Right now it's just a sort of neutral silence, but if Sember says something and is rebuffed, then it'll get awkward. Worse yet, what if he doesn't reply at all, just ignores him, or gets up and leaves? Sember half wishes the other boy would go away before he gets up the nerve to speak just to take the decision out of his hands. His palms are getting clammy with anxiety. He holds his breath, then realizes he's doing it, and lets it out again slowly, counting to five. Then five count breathing in, five counts out. Yes, he's going to say something. In…five breaths. No, ten. …Fifteen.

This is ridiculous. He's never going to do it.

"Hey Near?"

Horrified, Sember almost claps a hand over his mouth, then shifts his blanket as an excuse for the reflexive movement, silently dying a little in mortification. It's too late to take it back. He briefly entertains the rather stupid idea of getting up and hurrying out, and pretending he never said anything.

Near doesn't look surprised or angry or scornful, though. Actually, he doesn't look anything. He's putting together some kind of contraption that looks like it might be a pulley when it's done, and his expression remains one of calm concentration, gaze fixed on his toys. "Yes?"

Great, now he has to somehow keep it up. Fighting the tightness of his throat, Sember opens his mouth a few times, then finally manages, "What—what you think of him? Of L, I mean?"

Still no change in Near's expression; he's not even looking up at Sember, which doesn't do much for his nerves. "Why you ask?"

Sember looks away too, staring out the window, and that actually helps a little. He wonders if that's why Near doesn't usually look at people when he talks to them. It's raining lightly, the sky is pearly grey and the trees are starting to put out knobbly buds—kind of a dead, depressing landscape, but working toward spring.

"I…." S swallows, twists the edge of his blanket. "He not what—what I…expect."

"You don't like him," Near clarifies.

That's something that is hard for Sember to get used to here, how he's not the only one who pays attention and reads between the lines, how everyone he meets just understands things whether he wants them to or not. "…Do you?"

"He interesting."

"So…not what you expect either."

"Expectations can be limiting."

Sember supposes that's true, if not at all helpful. "I guess I thought L was…better."

"Better?" For the first time something other than indifference tints the other boy's voice. He sounds dully incredulous, or maybe a tiny bit curious. "He the best at what he do."

"Da, but…." Sember struggles to put into words what he's thinking. "He…he do good, but not cuz he want to be good."

He steals a peek at Near. The other boy is sitting up now, staring back at him over the towers of his Tinkertoy construction. "L never say he good. Only that he the best."

Those flat grey eyes have an unnerving laser edge to them, as though they have the ability, if Near were to concentrate just a little harder, to peel back his face and drill through his skull to slice into his brain, vivisecting his thoughts. Sember looks away again quickly. "That doesn't…bother you?"

"L is L. He do what he want and answer to no one. If that bother you, you have no place in the succession."

"You admire him," S says, a little aghast, and a little afraid of this small boy who delivers such blunt pronouncements so coolly and matter-of-factly.

"You don't."

"I—I don't know," says Sember, because he thinks he'd rather die than be sent Outside and be passed again from foster home to foster home like football, he doesn't want to be scrubbed, no, but this just isn't sitting right with him. "Solving crimes supposed to help people. But if you solve it just for a game, and not to help…what stop you from hurting people to find you solution?"

"L does what he think necessary. If he right and the crime get solved, then that's that. He right, and it was necessary."

So the ends justify the means? But what if he's wrong? Then what? Sember thinks. His guts feel like something cold and slimy invaded his body and died in there. He doesn't think he and Near have that much in common after all. He's starting to think it's not N that avoids others, but others that avoid N. "Oh."

Near appears to be done with the conversation, and Sember has no desire to continue it. After several long, uneasy moments, he wraps the blanket more tightly around himself and tries not to walk too quickly out of the room.

 

Chapter 12: Schedule

Lazlo has a very strict morning routine.

First he wakes up, of course. Then he collects his thoughts for the few minutes before his alarm sounds, and turns it off. Then he folds back the covers in a precise triangle, climbs out of bed, goes across the hall to the bathroom, washes his hands, brushes his teeth, and washes his hands again.

Back to his room. Strips the bed and makes it, smoothing every tiny wrinkle and tucking in the corners and stacking the pillows neatly.

Back to the bathroom. Washes his hands, brushes his teeth, washes his hands.

Back to his room. Changes into the clean clothes he set out last night, carefully folding his pajamas and placing them in the laundry hamper. Then he strips the bed down and makes it again, this time placing a folded set of clean pajamas at the head before stacking the pillows on top.

Back to the bathroom. Same as above.

Back to his room. Turns on the computer and, while waiting for it to boot up, wipes down the screen, mouse, and keyboard with antibacterial cleaner.

It used to be that the routine continued on in this vein for another twenty minutes or so, back and forth and back and forth, tidy and quiet and minty, but now he's allied with—maybe friends with?—Karter. K is a whiz at math and science and Lo is good with languages and writing and actually, K can be really fun to hang out with when he's not freaking out so it's a good connection. It disrupts things a little, though, because K takes his routine pretty seriously too and they haven't quite lined up their schedules yet.

"Lo?!" Right on time, at 7:27 am on the dot, Lo can hear Karter's voice echoing off the tile walls of the bathroom. Not discovering his friend brushing his teeth or washing his hands as expected, he starts knocking insistently at his door. "Lo! Where you be?"

"Here, K!" Lo yells back, and sighs. Here they go again.

"What? What?" His door swings open and Karter leans in, hanging from the doorframe. The gravity-defying explosion of yellow curls, urgently widened blue eyes and raised brows make him look permanently like a balloon just popped in his face. "Not ready?"

Lazlo winces a little. "I be ready at a few minutes, wait."

"Wait? We late! Late!" Karter taps urgently on one of his watches (one is digital on military time, one is digital on twelve-hour time, and the other is analog). "Late to breakfast!"

"Breakfast at eight. Now seven-thirty. Not late!" No emails, none that are important, anyway. He logs off, wipes down the mouse again, and steps around K to go back across the hall and brush his teeth.

"Clean teeths again? What—" at which point Lazlo loses track of what he's saying, because the rant continues in K's native language.

"No comprendo idioma noruego, Karter! English! Gotta practice," he replies irritably and somewhat indistinctly around his toothbrush. "Psicópata…."

It's difficult, struggling to communicate with someone he still doesn't know that well when they're both a bit highstrung and the only language they have in common is one that they haven't been learning for long. They're both smart though, and they must be getting through somehow because Lazlo brushes his teeth as fast as he can, and Karter keeps the foot-tapping to a minimum and his muttering mostly under his breath (though he still checks his watches every five seconds).

A door slams open down the hall.

"You guys loud," Isabel grouses, dragging out the last word as she shuffles over, eyes bleary and pale hair fuzzed in a tangled halo around her scowling face. "Not alla everyone as earlybird as you, eh? Why you gotta be that way?"

Karter squints up at the ceiling, visibly reaching for the words he wants. "For make you…not to sleep," he tells her cheerily, as Lazlo washes his toothbrush.

"Well thanks a bunch, it work smashingly," the girl says crabbily, folding her arms tightly. "I hafta sleep exactly eight hour a night, you know, elsewise I get hypertension and I might die."

"Mentirosa," Lo interjects while he dries his hands.

"Not lying! It true, even ask Verity!"

"I hear you pathy—path—that you lie, always." He'd like to add that he's never heard of anyone dying of not sleeping exactly eight hours a night, but that seems like a lot more thinking about grammar than he's willing to do before he's even had breakfast yet.

Isabel actually swells with anger, pale eyes flashing. "Who tell you that?"

"Qarri."

"She the one make up lies, not me. Can't trust her. Anyhow, bet you don't even know what hypertension is, bet you barely understand what I saying."

"Ok," says Karter, grinning at her indignation and obviously not caring at all. "Lazlo, ready now yet? Breakfast now!"

Lazlo briefly entertains the idea of nicking the other boy's watches sometime and setting them back twenty minutes or so, though he doubts it's doable because in their entire brief acquaintance he's never once seen K without all three of them on. Actually, what would be really funny would be to set them all to different times, until the part where Karter calmed down enough to throttle him. "Not late. Chill."

"Dui a," Isabel agrees grumpily. "It only seven-thirty, breakfast not even out til eight. You gonna sit at empty table and fiddle you thumbs?"

"Seven-thirty-three and twenty-two seconds," K corrects her, thrusting a watch-covered wrist in front of her eyes as evidence. "Lo! Really?"

"Almost ready!" Lazlo, who is soaping up the hands he just dried again, makes an inconspicuous face at the mirror. He gets that Karter is going to be antsy until they're sitting at that stupid table, waiting for breakfast, even though they'll be sitting there for twenty minutes doing nothing (provided Constance doesn't notice them, because if she does then they'll get conscripted into helping set the tables) but he's pretty sure he missed a spot between his fingers and it only takes a few minutes, jeez.

"About time," grumbles Isabel. "Go away or shuddup so alla rest of us can sleep."

"What? Sorry, no speak English," K smirks, gesturing impatiently at Lazlo and making emphatic use of the only Spanish he's picked up so far from the other boy. "Vamos, vamos!"

"Coming!" Not entirely satisfied that his teeth are as clean as they could be, Lo shoulders past the still-glaring Isabel. He can brush them again later.

Notes:

Translations without guarantee of actual linguistic correctness

No comprendo idioma noruego! - (Spanish) I don't speak Norwegian!

Psicópata - (Spanish) psycho

Mentirosa - (Spanish) liar

Dui a! - (Mandarin) something along the lines of 'that's right!' or 'that's true!'

Vamos! - (Spanish) Let's go!

Chapter 13: Joie

Sscritch!

The match flares to life, blue and morning-sky-gold and edged with angry orange in the dark. It shivers and sways as she moves it gently back and forth, tipping it so that flame crawls up the blackening wood. So pretty...like an actual living thing, surviving only through the destruction of something else, like so many other living things. Mesmerized, Crash slowly turns the match, until the flame is brushing her fingertips, then blows it out in a quick huff of air. Gone, just like that. Like any other living thing.

Bon anniversaire, pépé.

Her grandfather would be 68 today if he were still around. So almost an hour and six burnt fingers after midnight, it's 68 spent matches scattered across her windowsill.

Crash's eyes are stinging a little (it's just the smoke, she tells herself) but her pépé would tell her that life is for laughing and not crying so she laughs, and brushes the charred remains off the sill to tumble down to the yard.

Pushing the window open wider, she climbs up to sit on the edge and lights herself a cigarette, letting her bare legs swing free to tap her heels against the warm brick. It's a little cloudy and more than a little humid but the heat is bearable on this side of midnight; the last few days have been practically tropical. The air conditioners have been turned up correspondingly, and for some reason with the way the building is laid out all the cold air seems to concentrate in the physics lab so Crash has been freezing her butt off most of the day. It's nice to soak in some warmth for a while. The brass would probably flip if they knew how many of the students had their windows open, letting all the cool air out, but gotta get their nicotine somehow, eh?

"You up late," Devon observes, and she nearly falls out the window. She didn't notice him sitting in his own window several feet over (admittedly careless of her), cigarette in hand and that silly sheet folded up on the window ledge to keep from getting dirty. As she looks over D reflexively smooths his hair.

"I think you miss a bit there," she teases. It's supposed to be funny—they're on the moon-shadow side of the building and it's so dark she can barely make out anything but a vague form and the ember of his cigarette, let alone the individual strands of glossy black that could very well be sticking straight up off his head, for all she can see, but as people around here are wont to do he of course takes it too seriously and there's a cold edge to his voice as he replies, smoothing his hair again.

"Up late and going through almost alla whole box'a matches alla at once. You only burn that fast when you buggin'. What you buggin' on?"

She imagines it's probably nice to not be psychoanalyzed every second of every day, even in the middle of the night when she thinks nobody's paying attention, but she wouldn't know, would she, and for a brief minute Crash misses Outside so much it hurts—misses sun-baked grapevines and playing with the dogs and the twinkle in her pépé's eyes when he showed her how to twist the little paper firecrackers and would tell her that the most enjoyable things in life always involve a little risk, Madeleine, and if you're not enjoying yourself then you're not really living.

And he's dead now but if he weren't he'd tell her to laugh.

So she laughs off the question and fires back, "I'm 'aunted by the 'orror of you ugly face, too nightmarish to sleep. You so bored you countin' matches? Right. What you buggin' on?"

It takes him a moment to answer, and Crash holds back a sigh, taking a long drag on her cigarette instead. Whenever he's being any fun at all he snaps right back, commenting on her commoner's snub nose or how ugly her freckles are or how he would teach her how to use a comb, if she could handle it. When he has to think it means he's going to get all grim—well, grimmer—about things. They almost never see eye to eye but they talk because it's convenient, being next door and next letter to each other, and she hates it when Devon gets like this, all doom and gloom and with his lovely pale eyes looking at nothing and sounding dangerously like he's confiding in her.

"Kira," he finally says, and that's all, and Crash thinks that was an awful long think for an awful short answer. Still, she's not surprised, because the entire House, staff and student alike, is bugging over the whole Kira tiff. She's no exception, so it's not unreasonable for D to assume that's what pépé's birthday fires are all about. Crash is a lot happier letting him assume that than giving any hint of the truth.

"L gonna smash 'im like slugs onna sidewalk."

"Zhidao," Devon says irritably. "But L takin' his sweet time. It been almost four months. What if he don't? What if by the time he do things are changed for the worse?"

"Pfff. And what if a piano falls on 'is 'ead from the sky? You forget that one."

D lets out an angry huff of smoke. "Why don't you ever take anything seriously?"

"Why you take everything so seriously?" C snaps back, and is immediately pissed off that she let him get to her, but she hates that he always has to predict the worst about every tiny thing that happens. Crash likes things that are pretty and dangerous, and that's why on some vaguely-defined level she actually likes Devon a lot, but his unconquerable pessimism is the one hideous thing about him and it's impossible to avoid. Worrying didn't make her pépé better and it's not going to do anything about Kira either. "Keep that scowly-face and you face get stuck all wrinkledy like that. You already 'ard to look at, can't afford to make it worse," she adds lightly, just to take the edge off, try to cover the fact that she might possibly be genuinely upset by the mere suggestion that L won't dispatch Kira in a timely manner. Which is patently ridiculous and not even worth considering, let alone losing sleep over.

But D's D, and he'd probably shave his own precious eyebrows before he ever took a hint and lightened up for once. "The only reason you deflect like that alla every time is cuz you don't wanna admit you worried."

"Now 'oo's deflecting?"

"Already said I was worried. You the one up, burnin' matches like it's you job to take out the ozone layer single-handed and actin' like everything fine." Devon flicks his cigarette, sending a tiny glowing seed of orange falling down into the darkness.

"You right." She hears D shifting, can picture the look of surprise on his aristocratic features, graceful brows arched and slightly skeptical. "I am out to trash the ozone layer."

He sighs, and Crash wishes he would laugh occasionally instead of getting mad all the time, because he really gets to be a drag after a while. Stubbing out her cigarette and leaning into her room to drop the butt into a cup (it'd get suspicious if there were a pile of them in the grass below her room, now wouldn't it?), she almost decides to call it a night then decides no, it's pépé's birthday and she's going to do her damnedest to try and enjoy herself. Killjoy or not, D has the potential at least to be fun, even if she might have to eke it out of him. So instead she lights herself another cigarette and makes herself comfortable.

"What about that row earlier, eh? You 'ear Izzy and Q tiffin' at each other?"

"Seein' as how I'm in England and not the moon, couldn't avoid it," D mutters, and he still sounds cross, but if he didn't she'd probably think something was wrong. "Which one you bet gonna kill the other first?"

Crash grins.

Notes:

Translations (accuracy not guaranteed)
Bon anniversaire, pépé. (French) Happy birthday, grandpa.

Zhidao. (Mandarin) I know that.

Chapter 14: Serpent

"Where's Backup?" Dex asks suspiciously, looking around as though the other boy might be lurking behind a bookshelf, which Alt has to admit isn't such a stretch-and then of course he feels terrible, because he shouldn't be thinking such ungenerous things about B.

All four of them are staring at him questioningly now, and there's that hint of mistrust in their eyes, and that little voice in the back of his mind that sounds a lot like B whispers it—they really do all hate him.

"Bio lab," he says faintly, and it's not like he can do anything to make them despise him more, so he asks, "Can...can I study with you guys?"

D and G look like they'd as soon tell him to go to hell and Concord gets that same frozen look she gets when the English professor calls on her in class, but Hopper shoots Dex an odd, I-told-you-so kind of look and scoots his chair over to make room. "Sure, Alt."

Practically shaking with relief, he pulls up a chair and opens his history book. Gao and Dex's stares burn his face as he flips through it with trembling hands.

"We talking about Napoleon," C says in her feather-soft, pretend-nothing-is-strange-about-this voice, and he nods mutely, turning to the right chapter.

"Not to bug," Gao says suddenly, "but if B in the bio lab, what you doin' here?"

"I…." Alt doesn't know what to tell them, can't admit to his competitors that he's shaken down to his bones, would feel even lower and more exposed repeating any of the unsettling conversation he just had with the only person in this place that doesn't completely loathe him.

"Did you row?" Dex asks, and Alt meets his eyes expecting to find scorn and instead finds wheels turning and keen deduction, even a hint of cocoa-brown concern, or maybe that's just what he wants to see, and he feels weak and ashamed and hates himself that little bit much more.

And of course they didn't row, Backup is far too kind to him to ever quarrel, and it would be ungrateful of Alt to fight with him, but for some incomprehensible reason he feels a lot safer here, surrounded by his enemies, than he does alone with his friend, so he lies, "Yes."

"You ok?" asks Hopper.

They're all looking at him again—or maybe they never stopped staring—and Alt doesn't even know how to start answering that question, because if he's honest it might take hours and there'd be nothing left of him in the end but ribs and shame and parched, moth-eaten organs.

"I'm…." he starts, and doesn't actually know where his mouth plans to go from there, and suddenly they're looking not at him but behind him, and the scowls he's expected all along finally surface.

"Alt?" Backup asks, and his voice is gentle, it's hurt and disappointed. "Why would you leave me like that?"

Guilt fills him like tar, cloying and sticky and impossible to wash off, and he's so sorry he betrayed his only friend like that, but he didn't know what else to do, he was so disturbed by the things B was telling him—

"Colin, could you pass me that scalpel?" Backup had said, eyes down on mouse he was dissecting and hand outstretched and waiting, and A had simply stared at him, mouth open, because he had told his friend so many things when B has asked, had even reluctantly answered his sympathetic questions about how he felt when his mother lost his unborn brother and killed herself, but one thing he knew for a fact was that he'd never told anyone was his name.

"What—what you say?"

And B looked up, his eyes wide and guileless and blacker than Alt ever knew it was possible for irises to be before he met Backup. "That scalpel. Could you hand it to me?"

"Before that."

For a moment he seemed confused, uncertain of what A was talking about. "Oh. Colin? That's your name, isn't it? Colin Connick?"

"How did—how did you—?"

"God told me," Backup said, as though this were a normal, every-day occurrence.

The bottom of his stomach had dropped out, and he was still waiting for it to land. "You went through my file," he said, horrified and the tiniest bit angry, and too shocked to do anything but stare.

B stared back at him as though Alt had stabbed him in the chest. "Why are you so suspicious of me? You don't even give me the benefit of the doubt before assuming I'd lie to you? Why would I do that? I trust you, you know," he said, and looked like he might actually cry.

"I'm sorry," Alt said immediately, and he meant it, because B was always so nice to him and somehow he always ended up being cruel in return without meaning to. "It's just—there's no such thing as God, B."

"That's exactly what he said about you, at first," he said, frowning a little. "I mentioned you, and he thought I was making things up. God forgot all about you, Colin. I reminded him, though, I reminded him that you were the little boy who hated his brother, and he remembered, and he told me your name."

Alt was speechless. Backup would never, ever lie to him, but—well, A had never been sure about there being a God, and that was a big thing to change his mind about.

But…but if there was a God…and how else would B have found out his name?

Everyone else despised him. It was not so implausible that God was no exception.

His guts felt full of cold, slow-boiling lead, bubbling and poisonous. "I gotta go to the bathroom. Be right back," he said, and that's how he ended up in the library, caught between the distrustful glares of his four almost-confidantes and the sad, wounded dark eyes of his friend.

"We're trying to study here, Backup," Dex says coldly, but B never breaks his eye contact with Alt, and as though he's pulled by puppet strings he feels himself closing his book and standing.

At the doorway he glances back, and all four are still looking at him, expressions ranging from quizzical to disapproving. A sudden urge seizes him to say something—help me—but it never leaves the back of his mind and all that comes out is a desperate look at Dex, who shakes his head in a you-had-your-chance-and-you-threw-it-away kind of way, and B looks back curiously to see why he's hesitating so he follows.

 

Chapter 15: Poker

"Hm…." Addison looks over his cards critically and scratches his chin, taking his time to think over his options.

"In ten years we might get to finish the game," Kendall tells Torres, chuckling and elbowing her in the arm. The psychologist returns with a tight smile, nudging away a little.

"Ok. I'll go in. One guess each," he says, and grins challengingly over his beer bottle.

They're an odd collection: it's difficult to tell Addison's age, but he has the look of an owlish sort of bookworm, sprawled out in his chair with his long legs stretched out; Dr. Torres is fairly young but sits up ramrod-straight and holds her cards primly in both hands, eyeing the man calculatingly; and Kendall, the House reference librarian, is a plump woman in her fifties with red-dyed hair and the sort of jewelry that Addison refers to as "Christmas tinsel". Outside, the three of them would probably never have enough in common to be sitting together playing cards. Options are pretty sparse, however; just leaving the institution for a pleasant evening is not exactly an available alternative.

On paper, the House is an orphanage. Of course not all of the children are technically orphaned; some were taken away from abusive homes, some were unwanted, some were separated from their families in situations of civil turmoil, and some…well, supposedly there are no records of any of them, so who knows? In any case, it's been seen to that none of the students of the House will ever have any inconvenient relatives or family friends show up and try to claim them.

What is rather less generally known is that the same is true of all the permanent staff, the ones who know the true purpose of the House. Every connection to the outside world is a liability to an institution that trains replacements to a myth. Even the most trustworthy person might accidentally let something slip to a spouse, or to a buddy over drinks. And if nothing slips, that still doesn't protect against neighbors and family simply getting curious or suspicious. When you come to work for Watari, you go off the map. Slip through the bureaucratic cracks. Emigrate but never immigrate. Some are even pronounced legally dead. Regardless of the method by which it is accomplished, you renounce citizenship of wherever you come from and become a member of the House, which might as well be a world unto itself.

So the men and women who accept Watari's offer have two things in common: they're extremely talented and highly trained at what they do, and they have a reason to want to abandon their lives and impressive careers.

Those reasons vary as widely as their backgrounds. Constance lost all six sons to the rebel conflict in Ireland (she's never said which side they were on). Verity, the nurse who runs the infirmary, was head of surgery at a hospital in Rwanda until she fled the civil war. Nobody's sure where the groundskeeper, Hopkins, is from, but it's rumored that years and years ago he was a high-up military officer exiled after a government turnover. Chegal, who runs the surveillance systems and administrates the servers and computer intranet, escaped political imprisonment in North Korea. Matron Marta ran a successful company that made and sold bulk textiles until her husband, who it turned out had been hiding his Mafia connections from her, until a deal went bad and took his entire family into hiding—unsuccessfully.

All in all, the House staff members are just as brilliant and damaged as the students. Instead of their parents, they've lost husbands and wives and children; instead of being abandoned, they've been forced to abandon their cultures and friends and homes and careers by war, civil collapse, and threats of assassination, defamation, or imprisonment.

They even leave behind their names, just like the children. Although, instead of being assigned letters (or numbers, as some of them have joked), the staff all choose their own pseudonyms.

"Addison's disease," Torres hazards.

"Too easy," says Kendall. She clicks her brightly painted nails on the table, narrowing her eyes at the other librarian. "Wasn't there a car model in the early 1900s called the Addison?"

"Wrong and wrong," says Addison, the corners of his blue eyes crinkling. "Ten."

Shaking their heads, the other two drop their chips on the table and they all draw cards.

It's probably not very responsible, using the inspirations behind their pseudonyms as part of a poker game (well, it started as a poker game, anyway—it's gained a few rules and lost a few others and probably doesn't look much like poker anymore). Term exams are over, though, which means all the students are taking a break from studying and are less stressed, which means that the staff can take a break too, relatively speaking. Constance got a hold of some good German beer for them and whipped up a truly amazing crisp dip, and they're having a rare good time.

Addison is having an especially good time, because he ends up winning the round.

"Ahhh, yes," he says, grinning like a little kid as he scoops the chips into his pile. "The rewards of superior intellect."

"Superior luck, you mean," Torres corrects, frowning sternly, and Kendall laughs uproariously.

"C'mon, you're the only one not figured out. Give us a hint, at least."

"I'll give you more than a hint, I'll tell you, since you show no signs of ever winning," he says, piling all the cards together and shuffling them. "Joseph Addison."

Torres frowns, raising one dark brow. "Never heard of him."

"All the better for you," says Kendall, scoffing. "Are you talking about the essayist Joseph Addison? I've been giving you too much credit, Addy. The man was spectacularly mediocre."

"Exactly," says Addison, and deals the next round.

It's as innocuous and disconnected from anyone he knew or anything he likes or dislikes as anything can be, and it's not his first false name. The librarian was approached by Watari when the Witness Protection Program failed the whole "Protection" part of its job, and just as W promised, he's never gotten a hint since entering the House that anyone has tracked him down again. No one there knows he's here, and no one here knows where he was.

"Alright," says Torres. It's hard to tell what she's thinking as she examines her cards. They all have excellent poker faces. They pretty much have to. "I bet twenty."

 

Chapter 16: Surrender

Near can't remember the last time he was this pissed off.

His new charge, however, couldn't be more indifferent. He's always been under the vague impression that small animals tend to be curious or playful, but this one—Robosapien, as he's just labeled it at Roger's nagging—is sprawled on its side, returning his laser glare with a look of boredom.

It's not fair. Near doesn't know what good this will accomplish. He knows what Roger thinks this stupid game is going to accomplish, but right now he's convinced that both he and Torres are idiots. Interpersonal responsibility, what a bunch of rhetorical trash. People show responsibility toward others because they have to. If they can't be coerced, or convinced that you can somehow be of use to them, they're going to drop you the first chance they get. Everything else is just lies and bullshit. Near learned that the hard way. It's not fair that he be expected to hold to a societal standard that was never applied to him.

"I don't want you," he tells the cat bitterly. "You serve no useful purpose."

Robosapien blinks once then starts licking its paw.

---

Night is worse.

He's blockaded the creature and its litter box in the corner of the room with Legos, but that can't stop it from crying. It's been quiet all day. Why can't it shut up now?

Near considered shutting it in the toy chest (didn't want it 'doing its business' in there), leaving it out in the hall (Roger and Torres might decide he's incurably lacking in the qualities necessary to be L), and putting it out on the windowledge then shutting the window (he could risk getting scrubbed, and then what use would he be to anyone?) So now instead he's curled in a ball with the covers pulled all the way up and his pillow over his head, clamped over his ears to try to muffle the noise. It's not working.

This is beyond a lesson, or even punishment. This is torture.

The most efficient way to end it would be to go to Torres and tell her it's bothering him, but then he'd have to explain why, and he's not willing to be that open with anyone.

Maybe he should just go sleep somewhere else—one of the study rooms, maybe, or even one of the infirmary beds—if he's caught he can always just lie and say he wasn't feeling well—

But then why didn't he get the nurse, or the on-duty aide? And that will only work so many times anyway. He doesn't know how many nights may pass before the miserable creature learns that crying doesn't accomplish anything.

---

Xie is the most jealous about the cat. Or at least, she's the one who lets it show the most.

The creature is intolerable at night, but during the day it just sort of follows him and sleeps (oh, the irony). It lounges a couple feet away in positions that don't look physically possible, let alone comfortable, while Near curls up on the common room floor and plays with the Legos. He thinks grudgingly that maybe he could put up with that, since it's not knocking down his toys or jumping around like he thought it might, but Xie is hovering nearby, obviously itching to play with Robosapien, and that's annoying.

Near's already short-tempered, both because of the injustice of the situation in general and the recent lack of sleep, and if he were a just a tad more inclined to engage he'd turn around and tell her to buzz off.

"Can I pet her?" Xie asks shyly, when he shows no sign of taking the hint from her hopeful lurking.

"No. Leave it alone."

None of the House kids are really the type to take permission that seriously, though, and just a few minutes later, there's a yelp of pain and he turns in time to catch Xie snatching her hand away from the cat, who appears to have closed around it like a raccoon trap.

"She bit me!"

"What part of 'leave it alone' was unclear?"

Xie scowls, examining her hand, which is bleeding slightly. "You two suit each other," she snaps, and finally goes away.

---

After four days he's exhausted, and though thankfully no one seems to have noticed yet, Near feels like a wreck. The cat messes up his routine and he doesn't like it. Other kids seem to think it's an excuse to approach him. He hates the smell of the catfood, hates cleaning up after it, hates that everywhere he goes there's that quiet pad-pad-pad following like a fluffy shadow. It's a waste of his time.

And then there's the crying.

He's tried putting a blanket in Robosapien's little Lego pen, moving it to be next to the heating vent, leaving food and water in there for it, and still it won't stop mewling all night. If Near believed that animals could construct complex thoughts, he'd be convinced that it was trying to drive him insane. Short of killing it, he's running out of ideas.

The cold, itchy feeling is like static under his skin, like his hands and insides have fallen asleep and have that awful pin-tingly sensation that just won't go away. Isn't tuning supposed to fix this? Ten years from now stress and discipline and obsession with the Kira case will bury it in the deepest corners of his mind and he'll be as good at hiding his emotions from himself as he is at concealing them from others, but right now he's still just a little boy, and that wretched cat sounds just like the baby did in the last couple days before she finally died of dehydration.

Near used to blame himself. Mommy always told him to take care of the baby while she was gone, which was often, and he always had. The last time, though, she left the baby in the crib instead of on the floor, and he couldn't reach through the bars with the bottle. He tried putting other things in, like goldfish crackers and Cheerios, but she was too little to understand (or to eat them anyway, he later learned), and Mommy never came back. It has taken a lot of time and tuning for him to realize that she didn't leave because he didn't take good enough care of his sister, but because she never wanted either of them in the first place.

His useless effort to not dwell on that part of his life which is over and should no longer be relevant is interrupted by the loud clatter of a Lego wall falling over, and the scrabbling of tiny little claws on plastic. Near sighs into his pillow. Now he has to go fix it…not that it will do any good—

But then there's a slight tugging at the covers, and then light weight padding across the bed, and Robosapien flops down by the pillow like that's its rightful place. Which it most certainly is not.

But she's quiet.

Near is tired and frazzled enough to let it slide…just this once.

Chapter 17: Magpie

It's silvery and shiny and he wants it.

All through world literature class while Train is supposed to be engaging in the discussion about how imperialism is framed in the books they read for the week, he's surreptitiously peering up at the mystery thing and imagining what might be inside of it. It looks like a robot daisy, just sticking out of the ceiling. He can't even begin to guess what the heck it is— but that's half of its allure. When he gets this treasure back to his room he can examine it and take it apart and see if the insides are as interesting as the outside, which they almost always are.

The waiting is just about killing him. After the incident with Karter's marble-counting clock, and then again after the whole thing with the common room TV remote, and yet again with the three-hole-punch on Roger's desk, Matron Marta gave him a long (and mildly intimidating) lecture about stealing and deconstructing others' possessions. But this thing is in a public classroom and clearly doesn't belong to anyone, so it's not stealing others' possessions, and anyway there are three more spaced out around the ceiling in just this room and dozens more all over the House, and he only wants one. All the same, he'd rather be able to say he didn't know any better if he gets caught and the brass get mad than ask for it directly and discover for sure that he's not allowed so he's decided to wait until night to come fetch it.

Good thing there's a lot of planning to do, or he'd probably go crazy with impatience. Train isn't sure if the mystery object is connected to anything above the ceiling, or even to the drop ceiling tiles themselves, so he'll need wrenches, screwdrivers, and a few saws just in case it needs persuading to abandon its current home, a ladder, a way to circumvent the door, which will be locked after curfew…the ladder's going to be the hardest part, of course, because he's small and it'll be bulky and difficult to drag and set up, but when Train gets it into his head to get his hands on something he almost always finds a way. Even though his way sometimes involves a tiny bit of unavoidable mess.

Midnight finds him back in the classroom, perched on the lightest ladder he could find and curiously poking around the inside of the ceiling. He's managed to push and pull down the tiles around the shiny thing and has dropped them on the floor around the ladder along with a scattered pile of ripped-out pink wads of insulation. Turns out the thing is connected to some kind of metal pipe that seems to run through the ceiling. They must all be connected. Perhaps they're more cameras, Train is thinking, though they sure don't look like any cameras he's ever seen.

He's brought some tools and thinks he might be able to unscrew the thing from its fixture, so he works away at it with the wrench for a while, but it turns out to be a lot tighter than he hoped and at seven years old he's just not big and strong enough so he's considering trying to saw through the pipe (would probably take too long, assuming he can put enough pressure on it to make even a scratch without falling off the ladder) or maybe even sneak down to the metals workshop and get the oxy-acey torch (he's been told he's too young to use it yet, but how hard can it be? Just point and burn, right?) and that's about the point that on-duty aide happens to walk by.

Oh, poo.

"Train!"

Within seconds he's being bundled down from the ladder by the unreasonably alarmed-looking Grown Up. Apparently she remembers the TV remote incident pretty keenly because instead of putting him down, she keeps him balanced on one hip with both arms locked firmly around his waist while she takes stock of the destruction.

"I just wanna look, Sadi!" he says defensively, to head off any potentially forthcoming accusations of stealing.

"We ask questions and then take a closer look, Train," she says in that special voice that Grown Ups use when they're really mad or scared but don't want you to know it, and then she explains to him about the fire suppressant system and how when the alarm goes off, all the little robot flowers spray flame retardant down all over the room.

Well, ok, he supposes he can see why Sadiki doesn't want him cutting through the little pipes. That's the nice thing about the House, instead of saying No! and hitting you, the Grown Ups explain Why. Still, it takes a lot of the excitement and mystery out of things, and just because they explain Why doesn't mean they don't also send you down to the kitchen to wash pots for Cookie.

So Train puts on his best repentant pout and opens his eyes a smidgeon wider and cuddles into the embrace, because being the second T, he's the littlest in the House and can still sometimes get off the hook simply by playing the part of a winsome child. "I'm sorry," he offers in the most crestfallen tone he can fake. "I didn't mean to hurt anything…."

Unfortunately for him, Sadiki sees not only right through his act but also the wrenches and miniature saws that he…ah…found in the maintenance tool closet.

"Train…." she sighs, shaking her head and carrying him out, probably back to his room. "What did we learn about stealing?"

"I was going to put them back," T protests. "I was sharing."

"That's not sharing. Sharing means both people know and agree to share," Sadiki says patiently, and continues on in this vein for a while. The lecture is tiresome, but Train sort of likes being carried (though he'd never admit that to the other students or they'd tease him for being a baby). With his head resting on her soft-sweatered shoulder, he has a close view of her earrings.

"Locked door means ask permission to borrow," he repeats after her grudgingly when prompted, and wraps his little arms around her neck, snuggling closer. The earrings are dangly, with lots of tiny gold shinies and twinklies, bright against her dark skin. The backs don't look that difficult to unclinch.

The aide puts him back to bed, setting his alarm clock for painfully early in the morning so he'll be up in time to help wash breakfast dishes (Train sighs) and tucking him in.

"No more night wandering," she warns, then adds gently, "Good night, Train."

"Night, Sadi," T mumbles sleepily, and she shuts the door behind her. It's a given that she and the other on-duty aides will be checking regularly to make sure he's still in bed. He sighs a little.

As soon as he hears Sadiki's footsteps fade down the hall, though, he sits up again, not sleepy at all, and pulls his pretty new golden treasures out of his nightshirt pocket to admire how they sparkle in the dim glow of the alarm clock numbers.

Shiny.

 

Chapter 18: Ghosts

"It's time to leave," Even says.

Kae and Icarus look up. It's just a little after dawn and Friday calculus problems are due right after breakfast, so the three girls got up early to finish up and compare answers like they do every week. Even apparently finished the night before, though, and is sitting in the window waiting for the other two to complete their homework.

"No," says Kae, glancing at the clock on the wall. "It only six, E."

But the flicker of Icarus's hands diverts her eyes, and the older girl signs, She doesn't mean breakfast.

"You not talking about breakfast, are you?" Kae says for her, as she always does.

Even traces her fingers over the cold glass, then over the wood frames between the windowpanes, following the woodgrain and the shapes of the corners and edges. "No. The House."

A cold, hollow space opens up in K's chest.

"But—but what about L?" she blurts out, and Even tilts her head a little, as though she's listening to words that continue after Kae stops talking. Of the three of them, E has always shown the most promise for the succession, and though things have been—different—since A died and B ran away, still so recent and hard to wrap her mind around even though it's been months, the pressures of the House haven't made Kae any less determined to get every scrap of learning she can out of the place.

"'Two vast and trunkless legs of stone stand in the desert'," E murmurs, almost to herself, then says, "you can't become someone else without killing your own self."

It's A, isn't it, Icarus signs, and Kae repeats it.

E lets her hand drop from the window and runs it along the seams of the windowseat cushion instead. "He's always apologizing," she says softly. "Can you hear him too?"

"No, never," Kae says for herself, nonplussed, then says for Icarus, "Yes, sometimes."

She doesn't understand, and not for the first time, K feels like the odd one out in their little trio. On the Outside she was the strange, awkward, oblique one. Inside, though…so often she feels so abnormally normal. Kae likes cartoons on a Saturday morning occasionally, instead of more studying. She doesn't mind sports. She's starting to notice boys, in a general sort of way, though she's not especially attached to any of the ones in the House. Yeah, she nerds out over things like aerogel glazes and Kevlar fiber structure, and her parents died, but those are the reasons she's here—they certainly don't set her apart.

But with Icarus and Even, and the other letters to varying extents, it's different. It's like they have a sixth sense, some glimmer of dark matter magnet intuition, the accidental static spark in the machine that makes the miracles happen. They see with more than their eyes, notice details it would never occur to her to look for. Despite the fact that half of the time Even sounds like she's having conversations out of chronological order and Icarus's mouth and throat are too damaged to speak at all, or maybe because of those things, it seems to K like they're communicating on some level that even her far above average IQ and rigorous education can't help her to comprehend.

"Where you gonna go?" Kae asks, hushed. No one has ever, ever left Watari's program—unless you count Alt and Backup, and that's a pretty particular situation. K can't fathom what E is thinking. Going Outside means becoming an alien again, getting bounced around by foster families with varying levels of tolerance for people like them, maybe even adopted by wormbait. Traffic. Governmental hegemony. Public schools. Danger. They all joke that you have to be crazy to be chosen for the House, but right now Kae thinks you'd have to be a much more terrible and self-threatening kind of crazy to refuse that call once chosen. Alt was crazy to kill himself, Backup was a blatant psychopath, and Even must be crazy to throw it all away like this.

But E's breath catches and she whispers, "I don't know," and starts to cry, and she's obviously been visited and terrified already by all the thoughts that are running through K's head right now.

And while K may not be playing on the same level as the other letters when it comes to abstraction and intuition and sensing the voices of dead boys, this is the edge that she has—she knows how to act in times like this. With a meaningful look at Icarus, she gets up and goes to the windowseat and puts her arms around her friend. Icarus joins them after a moment of hesitance. The three girls huddle in the window, Even sobbing silently and Icarus patting her back at Kae's prompting and K telling her, "It ok, E, it gonna be ok."

"It not gonna be ok," Even gasps against her shoulder. "Bad things are going to happen, and I don't want to be here for them."

"What bad things?" Kae interprets Icarus's hand signals.

"I don't know. They're just there."

"Bad like B?" K whispers, a tingle of fear playing at the back of her neck.

"I don't know," E says again, then looks up, her bloodshot dark eyes flickering between them. "Come with me."

There's not even a second thought, really, just reluctance to say it. Whatever it is that E is experiencing, whether it's the trauma of finding Alt's body or guilt or just a sensitive, delicate mind that can't handle the strain anymore, K doesn't share it. She meets Icarus's eyes. The scarring on the other girl's upper lip is probably as minimal as can be expected, but it would never go unnoticed in a crowd. No, Icarus is signing, the movement of her fingers emphatic and jerky. I can't go back out there. Not yet.

"Please, come with me," Even repeats, almost begging, fingers plucking desperately at the hem of her nightshirt. "Don't stay here."

"We're sorry, E," Kae says, and she feels the burn of tears on her own cheeks.

Notes:

'Two vast and trunkless legs of stone stand in the desert' - excerpt from the poem 'Ozymandias' by Percy Bysshe Shelley.

Chapter 19: Fall

It's starting to get too dark to see their books properly, but that doesn't really matter since the real reason they're studying outside is because Una and Geia want to smoke. In the dim almost-twilight the lighting is just right that the two aides chatting on the steps and keeping an eye out on the children who are still outdoors can't see the thin grey wisps unless they come closer.

Sember doesn't smoke. He tried it when Gao offered him one, of course, hacking and choking the first few times and then got used to it, because, well, he didn't like feeling left out and it did take the edge of the stress off, but then he took that autopsy pathology course and nothing makes you want to vomit at the sight of a cigarette more effectively than dissecting a lung stuffed with tar. Almost every other student (and a lot of the staff) still does, though, so the secondhand stuff is pretty well impossible to avoid.

That being the case, he's just waiting awkwardly for U and G to finish their cigarettes. S does most things awkwardly, so that's bearable, but it's a bit boring and his attention is drawn up to the House itself.

For as much as the students like to hide, it's funny how visible many of them are from this vantage point. Many have their windows open to the pleasantly cool breeze. Some are even sitting in their windows (probably smoking) and a few are on the roof, beyond the view of the aides. Sember suspects the staff know the kids who have rooms on the third floor (or friends with rooms on the third floor) climb up there sometimes—though he doubts they realize how many or how often, or they'd probably take measures to stop it. It's not remotely safe. He's never been up there, and doesn't really understand the draw. It's not like there's anything interesting up there, plus he's not very comfortable with heights and thinks he'd probably die of terror even considering trying to climb out one of the windows and over the gutter. Not that he could probably heave his not-so-slender self up there even if he did have some crazed impulse to do so. He sighs.

"Ooohh, what now," Geia mutters around her cigarette, staring up at the roof now too through her fringe, and it's pretty obvious what she's talking about. "That crazy bitch gonna get herself killed one'a these days."

G's commentary confirms what his dull vision could not, though he suspected it was her: Crash has taken it upon herself to rail-walk the peak of the House, probably on a dare. The skinny figure, dark and blurry against the greying sky, wobbles slightly, her arms spread out, takes a few mindful steps, then speeds up a little, assured in her balance.

S can't help but agree with Geia's assessment, though he thinks 'bitch' is quite extreme. He doesn't think Crash is so bad. She's not pretty at all, with her too-wide mouth and disproportionately small nose, but she smiles and laughs a lot, and she's bright and assertive. One might even say he admires her a bit.

Of course, they're not friends. Actually, he's never spoken to her. Ever. Sember is pretty sure he's not prepared to handle her snappy comebacks or constant teasing. As a general rule he gets along a lot better with girls than with the other boys, but little C is the outstanding exception. Forget approaching her, just being in the same room makes his hands clammy and his chest shiver a little. That's ok. He doesn't mind admiring from a distance—

She disappears behind the roof, and there's a shriek of alarm, then a plummeting scream that cuts off sharply.

He's a terrible, terrible runner but he runs, knees pumping frantically and fat fists clenched, Una and Geia shouting in surprise behind him and those stupid inattentive aides on the front step turning in confusion as he races around the side of the House and oh God, oh God, she's crumpled on her back with her limbs at wrong angles. Practically falling in the grass beside her, he immediately checks her pulse. She's conscious but dazed, staring through him, eyes out of focus and breath shallow and sharp. "Dev?"

"Crash!" Devon yells. There's scraping and skidding and he slides down to the edge of the roof, eyes wide and dusky face pale with horror. "Is she ok?"

"No, you blakas sot, she just fall offa building!" Sember rails up at him, at a somewhat scary person he's barely dared to speak to before, with more force and volume than he ever imagined he possessed in himself, "Don't sit an' gape! Go get Verity!"

He's taken first aid, one of only a handful of students to have bothered, and he can see that she's going into shock. No surprise there; by the looks of things she's probably concussed, one leg and her wrist are obviously broken, other limbs less obviously but probably so, and Sember would be amazed if at least a few ribs weren't cracked. It's a miracle that she's conscious after a fall like that.

"Don't try to get up," he tells her, amazingly calm and quick and self-possessed on the outside though he's in turmoil inside, "You're badly hurt. Can you tell me your letter?"

"C…for Crash," she groans, and tries to stir again, then cries out in pain as she jars some broken bone or another.

"Don't move," he tells her again, and two revelations hit him, one good and one very, very bad and both like bullets:

1. This, this is his intended role, he's never truly fit as a detective; he's just meant to be a paramedic, and

2. His admiration for Crash is rather more than just admiration. Perhaps quite a lot more.

Luckily the first one is strong enough to let him ignore the second and focus on determining if she's sustained serious injuries until the nurse arrives.

-o-

Verity and her assistants take responsibility from his hands and C to the infirmary, and apart from the gossip, dinner and evening study and bedtime curfew go on as usual.

Sember goes through the motions as long as he thinks he can without Una and Geia noticing he's bothered. Actually, for once no one notices; the few that witnessed the incident have told everyone else about it, and they're all extremely surprised slightly impressed that tubby, nervous Sember reacted so quickly and efficiently while everyone else stood around blinking. It's an unflattering sign of how surprised they are to be impressed that they tell him so. G and U are openly smiling and supportive, obviously glad to see him come into his own in some way, and even Devon, his pale panther eyes resentful and mouth tight with repressed—S isn't sure exactly what, but he's glad it's repressed—looms over him terrifyingly after dinner to give his stilted thanks and shake his hand a bit more firmly than is comfortable.

At last he tells Geia and Una that he's really quite tired and thinks he'll go to bed early tonight. Curling up in the window with his blue blanket (which he's managed to hang onto despite Marta's complaining that it's old and needs replaced) S settles in to feel sorry for himself.

There aren't any brass rules against dating. It's the students who frown on it.

Housecest is just…never a good idea. Everyone knows what happened with Fallon and Kae. Jitter and Gao still won't speak to her, long after F has been scrubbed. Pack a couple dozen manipulative, conniving kids who are raised to put their ambitions before everything else into one building, multiply in the facts that most of them are highly introverted and have lousy social skills, a lot of them have mommy or daddy issues and a few have even been sexually abused, and no good can come of adding anything resembling romance to the mix. It would require a level of trust none of them can afford in such a competitive environment, and though they may not be emotionally mature enough to come to this conclusion with equanimity, they're all more than healthily paranoid and peer pressure does the rest. A few of them have anonymous relationships online; most, upon reaching adolescence, just handle the matter privately, or not at all.

Anyway, it's nothing S will ever have to worry about. He has no illusions as to how Crash might feel about him. She's literally never given him a second glance. And really, he can't blame her.

Still, says the tiny, daring voice in the back of his head, which almost never gets a say but which always seems to pipe up anyway at the most inconvenient times, he did just practically save her life. Well, maybe that's exaggerating. But it's wouldn't be odd for him to go down to the infirmary to see her. Check on the patient's progress. He wonders if she knows what all happened—she was pretty disoriented at the time. It's a conversation starter. Maybe they could be friends. She can't just ignore him now, can she?

And besides, the tiny voice prods him along, it can get awfully dull being stuck in the infirmary alone. Crash might appreciate the company, regardless of who provides it. If she's even awake. Which she probably isn't! He could just go take a quick peek through the door, make sure she's alright, and no one would ever be the wiser, including C.

He has to keep telling himself this to keep his feet creeping down the hall and stairs.

Just as he's nearly reached the infirmary door, however, he hears footsteps coming purposefully from the opposite direction. The confidence that filled him when Crash fell and the urging of the tiny daring voice abruptly vanish, and he freezes, petrified, completely at a loss for what to do—dodge into the infirmary, or run for it, or—or—

And, oh God, of all the miserable luck, it's the black Twin.

"What're you doing here?" Mello demands, stopping immediately upon seeing him. It's pretty obvious why M is up and about; he's got a monstrous stack of books and printed PDFs tucked in his arms and he looks strained and crabby-more so than usual. The matron allows the students to skip curfew if they're studying in the library under Addison or Kendall's watch. It's well known that Mello does so almost every night.

"I…." Sember falters, his mind blanking.

But any excuse he might have offered would be seen through in an instant anyway. S really hates being around both of the Twins, because as much as they insist that they're different (or, well, M does—N doesn't much care) they're disturbingly alike in that they share the uncanny ability to deduce or sense or hell, maybe they smell it on you for all Sember knows, every thought and feeling that runs through your mind; and you get that same sense from both of them, once they've figured it out, Mello through his smug expression of 'aha, I see' and Near through his significant silence, and then, the jerks, they spell it out for you just to let you know what they know.

And there it is, that knowing look. Sember can't help but cringe.

"You've come to visit little C, haven't you? After hours. When no one can see you," Mello observes, his electric blue eyes flicking to the infirmary door then flicking back to skewer his own eyes again like a fencing foil. Mortified, S feels his cheeks heating, and the corners of the Twin's mouth curl, eyes lighting as though he asked for a trike and got a motorcycle. "Like that, then. Oh, my. I wonder what she'd think of that?"

The other boy's obvious amusement and scorn make his stomach turn. It is laughable, really.

"Please don't tell anyone," S hears the words rushing out of his mouth, and immediately wishes he could take them back. Mello laughs out loud, then strides on by him, leaving Sember feeling like he's narrowly missed being hit by a train.

"Don't worry," M calls mockingly. "It'll be our little secret."

As soon as he's out of sight, Sember scuttles back to his room by another route, cursing that stupid tiny daring part of himself for putting him in this situation in the first place.

 

Chapter 20: Volcano

Matron Marta is not unlike a volcano in many ways. Sometimes her anger boils right up to the surface immediately, hot and scathing. Other times she holds it in check, letting it build deep down like a pocket of magma and sulfur, and the longer she keeps it under wraps the more carnage and devastation you have to look forward to when it finally explodes.

Quillsh has quite a lot on his plate. He already had quite a lot on his plate before things suddenly and unexpectedly came apart at the seams back at the House. Watari is probably capable of handling a higher-heaped plate than most people in the world, but he knows better than to ask for seconds, so when he sees the signs that Mount Marta is building up steam, he quickly draws the meeting to a conclusion, sends his old friend Roger off to the office he's just inherited to start getting settled in, and asks,

"What is it that you don't like about him?"

Well. The matron needs no more invitation than that.

"He knows nothing of children!"

"But he knows administration, he knows how to utilize and recruit personnel, he knows how to exploit legal loopholes, and he's much more flexible than he seems. It is true that Roger will probably interact much less with the children than Witterson did, but I assure you he is qualified to manage the institution."

"Papers, papers, pah! Children need zat father figure, they need interaction and attention—"

"Roger is one of many competent staff members in the House. The position of manager need not be the only one to which the students turn for attention," Quillsh says patiently.

The list goes on. He's too reclusive. He's too strict. He drinks too much. He's too old. Mr. Wammy heads off each one of these increasingly loud complaints with calm, pleasant rationality. Finally, however, they pierce the heart of the matter.

Marta's dark eyes are blazing, and the smoke is practically visible curling out like her greying hair from under her babushka. "Zat man is a mercenary! Such a man should not be around such impressionable young children!"

For the first time in the conversation a hint of Watari shows in Mr. Wammy's cheerful face, a barely visible steeliness hardening the corners of his mouth and glinting in his light blue eyes. "The company for which Roger was previously employed specializes in private corporate security."

"Qvillsh Vammy," Marta says in a tone she normally reserves for students who are trying to lie about their misbehavior, "do not try to pull vool over my eyes or distract from zis issue. I am not ignorant of deez matters."

"They've been consistently compliant with the guidelines set out by the Geneva Conventions," he says firmly. "I investigated them personally before contacting him. Anyway, his position there was administrative, not military, and I assure you that his conduct in the army was never short of admirable."

"Technicalities! You and I both know very vell zat such regulations can be easily circumvented," the woman snaps, ignoring the second half of his statement. "I am vell avare of deez loopholes and ze polite terms zey use to conceal ze truth! Matvei used excuses such as deez—"

"Marta," he says, and his voice is gentle titanium, and this is ultimately his House, so she stops, seething. The matron knows he thinks she's being unreasonable, but she just does not trust that Roger, she gets that same feeling from him that she did in those last few years with Matvei, when he came home later and later and grew cooler and cooler toward his wife and their son, and she trusted him anyway and in return for that trust she was rewarded with the sight of her little Alexei and her husband being shot dead before her eyes. Since then Marta has learned to follow what her instincts tell her, and they've never led her astray.

But she also trusts Watari, and he's never led her astray either.

"I have known Roger since I was a lieutenant," Watari is saying now, patient and polite as ever. "I will grant that he is not the warmest or most affectionate of men. However, I understand your concerns, and I can assure you that he never deceived his wife about his line of work. Whatever your opinion of his past employment, he is conscientious, responsible, and thorough, and I believe that he will do an admirable job as manager. Do not forget that many of the people in this House are on second chances, and have gone above and beyond what has been asked of them to make the most of it."

"…Very vell," Matron Marta says tightly. "I vill give zis Roger ze benefit of ze doubt for now. But only because you haf asked it."

"I appreciate it," he replies, and he's sincere and truly believes the best of people, and the matron thinks that this Roger fellow had damn well better prove him right, or Mount Marta will be having the final say.

 

Chapter 21: Panopticon

The first T is Traction.

It's an ironic name, though nobody realizes it until long after it's assigned to him, because he never really does catch ground at the House. Not many of the students get a chance to get to know him, and he doesn't try to get to know any of them, and when he's gone not many of them remember much about him except that he lasted less than two weeks.

T—whose name is Ray—doesn't need them. There's only one person he can trust.

"They took down the tape we put over that camera across the hall," Ally says, flopping down on Ray's bed. "Huh. Bouncy."

"I know," mutters Ray. He's just turned his computer monitor so that it faces the corner, but he still doesn't quite trust it. The back of his neck feels fizzly. "We'll just have to take the whole thing down. You reckon there's more in here?"

"Probably. Maybe. Definitely," his sister says, getting up onto her feet and giving the bed a more enthusiastic bounce. "We should check." Bounce. "I think I saw one under the bed." Bounce. "And another hidden in the fan."

"Yeah," he agrees, scratching the back of his head. "I can feel them."

"So do I have to start calling you T now?"

"No!" Ray snaps. "It's a brainwashing tactic. You shouldn't use your letter either."

"But it's funny, I'm U now," Ally says, laughing at her own pun. "Too bad M is ehm and not mee. Wouldn't it be funny if U was me and me was I and I was U?"

"Just don't. We can't let them get to us."

"Oh fine," Ally sighs. "So when're we going for the cameras?"

"Shhh! They can hear us!"

"Sorry!" She drops her voice to a whisper. "Are we going tonight?"

That night they take down the camera, throwing a pillowcase over it and snipping the wires and smashing it with a giant hard-cover atlas Ray got from the library for that purpose. He wraps the pillowcase tightly, knotting it and throwing it in the back of his closet and burying it with pillows and towels.

It's not an hour before They are at his door, shape-shifting this time into the forms of the stern woman who pretends to be a doctor and a new shape, a sunken-cheeked Korean man. The They who calls herself Torres explains to Ray and Ally that the cameras are there for the protection of the students and there is no reason to be afraid. The They who calls himself Chegal takes the pair of them to a room of wires and boxes and recorders and monitors and explains how it all works, and how at any given moment the students' privacy is being respected and they are not being watched. The recordings are only referred to if there is a problematic situation which needs reviewing.

Bunk, most of it, Ray is positive. And how did They know he and Ally had taken down the camera, if someone is not watching every second? He thinks it might be true that the room with the wires and boxes is the Center, but They only showed him that to scare him, to show Ray the extent of Their power.

And he thinks They know he and his sister know. As they walk prepatterned lines They have set for Ray and Ally to follow between classes and meals and study times, the cameras are turning their heads to watch them, catching them in crosshairs, cross-examining. They're everywhere—the biggest ones blink from the ceiling, but there are more, thousands more, hidden in every light fixture and electric socket and water spigot and vent.

After curfew Ray starts to think they made a terrible mistake in taking down the hall camera and not disposing of it more thoroughly.

"Can you hear that?" Ally whispers. She got scared and came to his room almost as soon as the lights were out and now they're both huddled under his covers, terrified.

Of course he hears it. How can he not? It's clinking and chittering, scrabbling at the inside of the closet door. That camera has either brought itself back to life, or the Center has brought it back to life, or it wasn't dead in the first place. Ray shudders. Maybe they can't be killed.

"So there's only one way to stop them for good," Ally whispers.

This time instead of a library book, he acquires a pair of hedge shears. They dodge and weave down the halls, avoiding the red-eyed glare of the cameras, and find their way back to the Center. There are wires everywhere in nets and coils and thick brain-stem bundles. Ally points out the thickest bundle to Ray.

Luckily, Chegal, who was woken by an alarm the instant Traction touched the security room door, bursts in and seizes him before he electrocutes himself. The next morning T is sent to a facility better equipped to handle and treat his problems.

"In again out again Finnigan," Constance mutters over her stove, forcefully stirring a large pot of chicken stock. "How on earth does that man expect us to give these poor kids any sort of normalcy when he's sending them in so fast they don't even have time for a proper psych workup?"

Everyone is talking about it (or determinedly not talking about it) at the breakfast table.

"No surprise there," Paran comments to Qarri after Roger makes the announcement. "That kid was cracked. Alla time talkin' to himself. You hear him?"

Gao attempts to open up bets over whether Mr. W will rename the next new fishie T or go on ahead to U, since the first T didn't even make it to the next letter's arrival. Nobody takes him up on it.

Fallon bites his lip and exchanges a strained look with Jitter behind Kae's back. Later that day he tells Torres he has changed his mind about the pills.

 

Chapter 22: Crossings

The first to traverse the House foyer every morning is Hopkins, the groundskeeper. A little before dawn his slow, stumping footsteps cross to the coat closet to retrieve his boots, then head out the front door to make his daily inspection of the wall and yard. Shortly after he returns, shucking his mud-clumped boots on the porch and stowing them back in the closet. Matron Marta and the maintenance staff frown on outside shoes indoors, especially mud on the nice rugs. Most of the children go barefoot or in socks, and the staff learn to get used to slippers. Hopkins stumps off toward the kitchens for a cup of coffee and the entrance hall is dark and quiet again.

Outside the sky pales and cool porcelain light filters in through the tall windows. As it brightens, the red, gold, and purples shapes of the stained glass above the front doors print themselves on the wooden floor.

Yawning, Kendall shuffles down the stairs in her favorite dinosaur slippers to get some coffee before opening up the library for any students who get up early to study.

Marta follows not long after and switches on the lights in the still-dim hall. The manor used to boast an elaborate antique chandelier. Train managed to change that in about five seconds, giving himself several nasty cuts, destroying the rug and damaging the wood floor, and providing Constance with a dishwasher and garden-weeder for three solid months in the process. A bigger rug was purchased to hide the scratches and gouges in the oak flooring and the overhead lighting is now much more tamper-proof and demure than the original, the most recent stage of the old building's evolution.

It was built as the centerpiece of a small but wealthy country estate. The sprawling Georgian manor was passed down for several generations and finally fell into the hands of one Mr. Benjamin Oswald Hemingford III, a bitter hermit who never married and spent most of his extraordinarily long life holed away writing a book he never finished. When he finally died, an event which his assorted nephews and nieces (many of whom were in debt) had anticipated for far longer than they felt was just, he left the entire estate to an extremely distant cousin purely out of spite.

The cousin, Dr. Morrison, was an old music professor living in Boston. He had no idea that he had a rich foreign relative with an estate and manor near Winchester until he received the call. Extremely grateful for the windfall but feeling he had done little to deserve it, Morrison accepted the money with plans to set up a music scholarship at his college. The manor house, however, he donated along with what little land remained to Mr. Quillsh Wammy, an old acquaintance who he vaguely remembered was from England and had established several orphanages across the country.

Wammy lost no time in going to work on the place. Immediately he had a protective border wall built and the building itself remodeled as an orphanage, adding another wing for dormitories and modernizing the kitchens. Then L came along, and the House took on a second remodeling and an entirely new purpose.

The mix of old and new is as visible in the entry hall as the layers of rock in a canyon. Ancient brass candle holders still line the walls but are now wired for electric lighting; the wood paneling and carved banisters have stayed the same, but state-of-the-art security cameras gleam from the corners. One wall is decorated with a series of portraits of Mr. Wammy, all created by the students, ranging from a classic, realistic oil piece painted by Linda to a more abstract collage done by Aris depicting the House's founder with four heads and four arms, inspired by the Hindu deity Brahma. When the proud little artist first presented it for his approval, Mr. W admired it gravely for a few minutes, thanked her and told her it was quite excellent, and went about the rest of the day breaking into quiet chuckles whenever he thought of it.

It's not long after Marta has gone to the kitchen for her own cup of coffee before the students start filtering down the stairs. Mello is the first, hair still damp and arms loaded down with books and papers, making a beeline for the library. Paran and Rom are next, slouching across the hall to the kitchens to wash pots in punishment for attempting to make some highly experimental improvements to the plumbing system without permission. Barton, the House technician, comes down with his keys jangling and Concord and Hopper right behind him to be let into the computer lab. Then Kae and Icarus, math books tucked under their arms and graphing calculators in their pockets, Yuan almost tripping over his large feet on his way to the gardens to check on the hybrid vegetables he's been trying to develop (he hasn't yet produced any that Constance hasn't described as "tumorous"), then Sember, Geia, and Faris also headed to the library to do study prep for the large vertebrate practical anatomy quiz later that day.

Food summons the flood, so to speak. A few are early (including Karter, practically dragging Lazlo and Nina behind him), but right at eight o'clock almost the entire House is pouring through the foyer into the dining hall. Xie waits at the top of the stairs until the traffic has thinned and she can walk down without getting jostled. Devon deliberately trips Crash at the bottom then claims he didn't see her. An aide catches Raphael and scolds her for sliding down the banister. Most are still in pajamas, slipping in their socks on the polished floor, and some have clearly rolled out of bed not three minutes ago.

Then the tide ebbs, everyone rushing back out of the dining hall, across the foyer, and scattering throughout the manor and either straight to their classrooms, or in a frenzied dash back to their rooms to get their books and pens and notes. All morning is required classes—English as a second language, maths, world history, and rhetoric.

Hopkins stumps through again, puts on his boots, and goes outside to mow the lawn while it's still cool out. The vivid light of the stained glass window crawls across the floor and up the stairs. Marta turns the lights back off on her way upstairs. While the kids are in class the maintenance staff pass through to clean, vacuuming and combing out the rug fringe and dusting the banisters and picture frames.

Lunch sees the return of the tide, much more awake by this point and slightly more likely to be changed from pajamas into sweats or jeans.

All afternoon is elective classes, so students and professors and staff trickle through almost constantly, pattering or stomping or scuttling up and down the stairs, across the room, and in and out the front doors. The foyer grows dim as the sun travels over the back of the House, and Marta turns the lights on again. Snacks are left out in the dining hall for the students at tea-time, increasing traffic, and kitchen staff head up and down the stairs or back hallway with trays of tea and biscuits for Roger, the librarians, and any of the teachers that request one. Near shuffles to the common room with a box of dominoes so heavy that he has to put it down on every other stair and twice more in the foyer to rest. Raina, the activities aide, herds a reluctant pack of kids out the doors for some enforced exercise. Zane pads through barefoot with a pencil behind his ear and a legal pad, clicking his tape measure, and slips outside to start on the dimensions of the garden shed (he's been systematically building a millimeter-specific blueprint of the entire institution).

Supper is at six-thirty sharp, drawing the entire House back together.

Then the serious studying begins and movement through the foyer slows. Professors are in their offices, working on lesson plans or grading homework. Students, alone or in groups, can be found in the common room, the labs, the library, or their own bedrooms, reading and writing and practicing group presentations and running experiments and cursing at code that won't compile and flipping through vocabulary flashcards for a rainbow of languages. Marta and her small army of aides are on patrol, offering help to students who look frustrated and keeping an eye out for potential trouble.

Hopkins stumps back in for the last time when it gets too dark to see outside.

There's a last dining hall rush a half an hour before bedtime for evening snack, with cereal and hot chocolate and honey bread for the late studiers. Ten-thirty curfew means Marta and her minions are steering children off to their rooms, older students going of their own volition and many of the younger ones, especially Quinn, struggling or hiding or trying to cry or sweet-talk or reason their rights to a later bedtime.

Those who don't like to study in their rooms and have night passes settle down in the library until red-eye curfew at midnight. Mello is the last, Addison finally kicking him out with orders to get some sleep—he's barely awake as is, and nearly falls up the steps. A kitchen assistant heads upstairs with a carafe of coffee for the aides on night patrol.

On her way to bed the matron turns the foyer lights off.

Chapter 23: Hyena

"Double trouble, there it go," Gao comments, drumming his thumbs on the surface of the table, almost stopping at the irritated look Kae shoots him down the table. Used to be that when K got crabby Fallon got crabby, and when Fallon was in a bad mood he dragged everybody down. But Fallon is gone now, and he doesn't give a stuck switchblade for what K thinks, not after what she did to his buddy, so he drums louder.

All the Dukes turn to see what he's looking at. He's exactly right. At the next table over, Mello has just sat down next to Near.

"Where the table monitor when you actually need one?" Dex mutters, scanning the dining hall. "G, can you quit that?"

"Tsssch, don't mind 'em. Maybe they tryin' a get along, da?" Hopper says, elbowing D in the arm when the other boy looks like he might get up. Concord, sitting on the other side of Dex, says nothing, just watches the Twins with the same fixed stare that she gives her computer screen when one of her programs is just beginning to go haywire.

"Wanna put a price on you 'pinion?" G says, unconsciously resuming the drumming and staring avidly as Mello turns to say something to Near. This is going to be good. M's been way too composed in the last few weeks, and that kid is like a coil of dynamite fuse; the longer he smoulders the closer you are to the end of the line. Better than Fite Nite on TV. (Terribly scripted, yes, but always a fascinating insight into what makes humans tick.) Can't hurt to have even more fun with it by winning back a few of the cigarettes he's sold.

"No bet," says H, eyes riveted to the next table over the rim of his coffee cup.

"Oughtn't bet on that kinda thing," Concord says quietly.

"Taboo and high-risk investment alla almost always bring the biggest immediate returns, people always gonna bet on that kinda thing," Gao retorts, not adding that she's being awfully dull, in his opinion, because Dex or Hopper would probably drop random points into one of his economics graphs again, destroying hours of work.

Linda's squirming in her seat. She's obviously dying to have a look, but she has to turn around blatantly to see. Next to her, Kae is amused, Icarus couldn't care less because she hasn't had any caffeine yet, and Jitter is how he almost always is—starting to get worked up.

"He's buggin' him 'bout something," Gao narrates for Linda, pushing his eggs idly around his plate.

"I hear them, what they doing?" Linda whispers, annoyed.

"Nothin' yet. M talkin'. N just sittin' there. Don't think he even listenin'. Now he puttin' ketchup on his plate."

"Which one?"

"White Twin."

"It none of our business," Hopper cuts him off, stabbing a large piece of bacon with his fork and cramming it into his mouth.

"Weishenme? Come on, they sittin' right there, obvo don't care we listenin'. Ha, M gettin' mad. Lookit him tick," says G, thoroughly enjoying himself. "Anybody else wanna take a bitty bet? I give three minutes 'til he start shoutin'."

"What kinda decibel level we talkin'?" says Lin, ignoring the clatter as J drops his fork against his plate.

Concord suddenly sits up straighter. "Dex," she says warningly.

Mello is clearly agitated, though he's still keeping his voice down, darting wary glances over toward the staff tables and the aides who are nearest, sidling between the tables to help the younger children pour juice and cut their bacon and sausage. Either unaware of or completely indifferent to (or more likely, Gao thinks, intentionally aggravating) Mello's anger, Near lets his eyes wander around the ceiling and takes a sip of his juice, and M's face gets just that little bit redder. Dex scoots back a little on the bench, tensing.

Gao ducks his head over his plate to roll his eyes. The other older students (Kae being the triply-underlined exception) are the closest things to friends he has or needs, but he'd never trust any of them either across a rigged poker table or in the stock market. They can't just keep to their eyes open and their hands to themselves and jump in only when they stand to gain something, they have to intervene. That's no way to win the game, or even get through it unscathed.

"Chill chill, keep out of it," Jitter mutters, fiddling nervously with his silverware, and Hopper agrees under his breath, "Not our fight. Not our place to interfere."

D turns to H, jaw clenched. "Remember what happen last time we decide not to interfere in somebody else's fight?"

A ripple passes over the table. Hopper stares back at his friend, face paling and knuckles tightening on his fork. "Ouch," Gao mutters, Linda looks suddenly frightened, and Kae scoffs but then jumps nervously when Jitter drops his fork again.

"That not fair, D," H says quietly. "The Twins not like him."

"We didn't think he would go that far either."

For once Gao actually agrees with Hopper. Comparing M and N to A and B is way out of line, even by G's skewed (and rather limited) notions of propriety. Alt was about as normal as they came around here and Backup was a soul-sucking hookworm, digesting him alive from the inside out. The Twins, though, they're part and parcel of one another: symbiotic rather than parasitic. Gao knows it's stupid and completely unscientific, but he's always had a vague notion that if one of them actually kicked it, the other would follow immediately. It seems like they exist purely to torment each other. The fact that they also torment everyone else is just collateral damage.

In any case, it's often a good source of entertainment.

"Dex," Concord says again, sitting bolt upright and one hand flying to his arm, and an instant later Mello springs up too, snarling.

"Near, I'm talking to you! Look at me!"

Heads are turning all over the dining hall now. Gao has to clamp a hand over his mouth to keep from laughing. Good thing he didn't get any takers on that bet; M barely lasted one minute, let alone three.

"They always rowin', not like they ever actually—" Hopper starts, and before he can even finish Mello proves him wrong by picking up his plate and slamming it down on the other boy's head with a resounding thwok!

Luckily for Near, Constance does not trust her nice china to a pack of kids; they use plastic, which is a little more forgiving on young skulls. All the same, for a split second he is clearly stunned, eyes as round as coins and slightly crossed, with ketchup dripping from his white hair. Matron Marta shouts from across the room and starts plowing her way over, but the dining hall is packed, with people who haven't sat down yet milling around the edges of the room and getting in her way. It's only a split second, though; then, deliberately, N picks up his glass and flings its contents into M's face.

The Black Twin sputters, flinging his juice-soaked fringe out of his face, then in a whirl of black and white and gold and red, they both tumble off the back of the bench, pummeling each other as well as a pair of skinny, nerdy kids who don't know beans about fist-fighting can be expected to.

Concord gasps and Dex leaps to his feet, jolting everyone on the bench, and Hopper swears, saying, "Ok, ok—" and D and H both scrambling over the table, sending plates and dishes and the juice pitcher spilling and toppling in all directions, with Marta shouting across the hall in Russian and an army of half-awake aides stumbling their ways through the tables to try to get to the fight. It all makes Gao think of chaos theory and the butterfly effect and exploding fractals and the minute domino shift of events and directions and the cigarette ember that sparks the inferno, and he realizes he's shrieking with hysterical laughter, and dammit, he's supposed to have that under control , which is both infuriating and hilarious. Icarus reaches across the table and gives his hair a helpful yank, and he stops, by which point Dex and Hopper have pried the two younger boys apart, still struggling, and Ma Marta is seizing the Twins by the shoulders and berating everyone in range.

M and N get hauled off to be sentenced by the Warden, though what good that does, Gao doesn't know. Figures that the two kids that hard-assed old curmudgeon would choose to dote on like they're his own would be the rottenest, least endearing of the bunch. It's pretty common knowledge that he's probably been given more than adequate evidence to have one or both of them scrubbed—except somehow it's also common knowledge that they're the favorites for the succession.

Ah, Wammy's, Gao thinks, seat of objectivism and the quest for the truth, and carnival funhouse of irony and insanity. It almost sets him off again, but Concord notices and pounds him on the back a few times to knock the crazy out of him.

Notes:

Weishenme - Mandarin: Why?

Chapter 24: Purple

Beckon could happily play Shostakovich concertos for days without stopping to rest. However, since last term, when he maybe neglected his other classes a smidgeon to spend more time with the music (well, ok, he barely scraped by in maths and literature) the algebra professor has taken it upon himself to check the Violet Room every evening to ensure that he detaches himself from the piano and studies for his other classes at some point.

Dr. Olive-Green (as B privately refers to him—his name is actually Chamaly or something weird like that) has just now extracted him from the Violet Room with a friendly reminder about the algebra quiz tomorrow morning. It's not that Beckon needs a reminder, not really. He was peripherally aware that something might be going on in that class, it just…it doesn't interest him that much. It's such a blah, taupe kind of subject. Beckon hates taupe. Taupe is a lame color.

Perhaps he will study his Russian. Russian because of Dmitri Shostakovich, of course—he's composing a symphony in tribute to him, and he thinks incorporating the rhythm of the Russian language will add some interesting elements. He is Beckon's idol, right after L and Mr. W, of course. Ever since he first heard Piano Sonata no. 2 when he was seven, replicating it perfectly after one hearing, he's felt a special kinship with the long-dead composer. His music is sugar-white and charcoal and scarlet and violent purple, sharp and jaggedly and cleverly mocking and fascinating. The day Ma Marta noticed Beckon was squinting at the boards during class and decided he ought to have glasses excited him terribly, because now, with his little round lenses perched on his little snub nose, Beckon thinks he even kind of looks like Shostakovich.

Humming to himself, he dawdles on his way back to his room, stopping often to look at the paintings on the wall and out windows and peek through doorways. Everything he sees he repeats to himself what it's called and what color it is (is, not looks like) in Russian.

It often takes him a while to go anywhere.

He's finally made his meandering way to the second floor when the wind is knocked out of him by a much more vocal distraction.

"Beck!"

"Ack!" He recaptures his glasses before they can slip off the end of his nose, settling them back where they belong and straightening them fussily. "Aris, you know I don' like it when you s'prise me like that," he chides her softly.

"Whatever sorry guess what," A says, fingers twitching as she just barely resists the urge to shake him in her excitement. It's easy to tell that she's excited once you get to know her, despite the flat tone of voice, because her eyes get really big and her brows go really high and she talks so fast it's hard to tell what she's saying. Whatever it is must be a good thing, because Una, drifting silently behind her, is actually smiling a little.

"What?"

"There a new girl, Mr. W send her today."

Beckon brightens immediately. "Mr. W visiting?" he says, looking around as though the old man might be coming down the hall this very moment. All of the children adore Wammy—after all, he saved most of them personally from orphanages or social work offices or police stations. He's always sunshine-yellow and light bright blue and interested in what they're working on, eager to examine their projects and listen to their performances.

"No," Una says, a little downcast, and he deflates just as quickly.

"Oh. That too ba—"

"Never mind Mr. W for now, we talkin' 'bout the girl!" says Aris, rolling her eyes.

"Oh. Right. This one…F, right?"

"No," Una murmurs as Aris says with exaggerated patience, "No, Beck. Faris been here almost a month now. This one G for Geia."

"Faris?" Beckon blinks a few times. "Really?"

"Yes, Beck. He the one who always on the sick list cuz his seizures, a'member? Never mind him," A steamrolls onward at his blank look. "We talkin' 'bout G!"

"Right. Erm…what about her?" Beckon says, trying to at least look more focused, because Aris gets pretty annoyed when he's not focused, but he's still pondering how on earth he managed to be oblivious to the presence of this Faris person for a month. He tries to remember if he's seen any new colors around and not thought about it at the time. Lower-case f is a greenish sort of letter, so he's picturing him looking a little bit like J, but for some reason people don't correlate to the colors of their letters like he thinks they should so he really can't base—

"She play violin!"

"Who does?" B says absently.

"Beck! You not listnenin'!" Patience spent, Aris actually does grab his shoulders and give him a very tiny shake. "Geia! The new girl! Plays violin! You know what that mean, Beck?"

Realization dawns visibly across his face. "…We can have our quartet—oh—we can play a full Shostakovich piece!"

"Now he got it," Aris tells Una, as closely approximating glee as she ever gets, and the shorter girl smiles back briefly. "She will, too, Beck. Sember said she was real happy when he told her we been waiting for another string player."

"Wonderful," B murmurs to himself, staring at nothing and mind fixed already on what music he's going to need from his folder of Shostakovich works. "I gonna go get my viola—"

"Not now," Aris says, catching him by the arm as he starts to wander off. "She just get here five hour ago, give her a lil' time at least!"

"Oh. Right," Beckon says reluctantly. Time for what? What could make someone feel better about the sudden upheavals in their life than a little bit of chamber music? Some people make no sense at all.

"Tomorrow, Beck," Una consoles him, her voice just barely audible.

"Yes," he agrees. He can hardly wait. Little g is a pleasant sort of pale yellow. It should go nicely with the rest of them. All thoughts of algebra quizzes now completely shoved out the back of his mind, Beckon dwells happily on violins and Shostakovich quartets.

Chapter 25: Dig

Yuan works his fingers deeper into the dirt. It's a little bit cool outside, mist-laced and damp, and the leaves are dripping in the just-dawn quiet. If he digs deep enough though, Y thinks he can feel warmth, radiating from the heart of the earth itself.

Marta will scold, as she always does, when he goes back inside with mud-covered hands and mud-covered feet and mud on his shirt and trousers and converts it all to mud on the floor and on stair railings and chairs, but it's worth these few moments every morning that he can be away from dead-tree and artificial-fiber floors and feel the ground. The Matron and maintenance did end up winning the battle over putting plastic down on the floor of his room (he hates the feel of plastic under his feet even worse than the carpet) but it means he can keep his potted plants in there now. He likes plants.

He likes the garden better.

Down, down, deep, Yuan thinks, imagining or willing his fingers to twist and knot and branch like roots, anchoring him in this one spot, growing slow and steady as smaller beings shoot up and wither around him, thick-skinned and strong and impervious to wind and rain and words and blows.

This is how we could be. That is how people should be, he thinks.

No one he's suggested that to has ever agreed with him, though. And it's not what they are, not yet; distantly he becomes aware that his stomach is growling, and that his roots are fingers and cannot actually absorb nutrients from the ground, and that he will be late to breakfast if he doesn't get a move on. Slowly, reluctantly, he uproots himself, and slowly becoming small and gawky and clumsy-footed again.

Click!

Startled, Yuan falls over and lands on his butt in the dirt. Quinn, a stringy little girl much younger than Y, is crouched several feet away, peeking over her giant camera.

Yuan is not at all certain what the appropriate social procedure is in this situation, though Dr. Bull has been working with him on how to have conversations—make eye contact, he knows that's important, so he studiously does so, but the longer he stares the more awkward it feels. Should it be? He hopes that Q will say something first to spare him the trouble, but she's distracted, fidgeting and eyes darting from Yuan to a passing bird to Yuan to a rustling shrub and back to Yuan again. Her hazel eyes are much too big in her face, unnaturally round and bugged a little. Yuan can't help thinking she's one of the oddest humans he's ever set eyes on, now that he's getting a good look at her. Like a tiny, twitchy tree frog. Y hasn't talked to her much. Mostly he's heard her screaming and throwing tantrums when she doesn't want to go to bed or to class. That doesn't seem like a very interesting thing to talk about, though. Mulling over the problem, he thinks falling back on well-established convention and saying "Good morning" might be a good start, but if Q gives the traditional repeating reply, he's not sure where he'll go from there.

Before he quite comes to a decision, Quinn finally speaks. "You were being a tree."

"Yes." That's easy enough.

"I never seen somebody be a tree b'fore." Her fingers fiddle at the camera strap. "How come you doin' that?"

"I…" Yuan wavers a moment, then thinks, She's just a little kid. And worrying about what other people think is a problem for short-lived creatures. "Cuz I'm practicing. For when we evolve ourselves."

Quinn stoops quickly, and for a short embarrassing moment he thinks he's lost her attention already, but she's just prodding at the small white flowers of a pea plant, leaning down to sniff at them curiously. Aiming her camera, she fiddles with a few knobs and dials, sticks the lens right into a cluster of blossoms and clicks a picture. "You think we gonna evolve inna trees? I don't think that possible. An' would take kazillions of years anyhow."

Yuan smiles magnanimously. "I didn't say we evolve into trees. I think we evolve ourselves into part-trees. We got the technology—cloning and splicing and genetic manipulation—trees live longer than people, you know—and they produce oxygen—it would solve deforestation, and a lot of diseases, and, well, and other stuff," he concludes a little lamely, not quite ready to share the big reason. Trees are still, trees are strong. Redwoods and bristlecones aren't fragile like little boys. He doesn't reason it quite as explicitly as that, but there's that awareness there, that being that way makes him feel better.

"Oh," Q says, eyes following a rabbit that skitters across the grounds then pauses. Quickly she lifts her camera and twists a dial, making the lens spin and whir. "Is bein' a tree hard?" Click.

"No. It very easy," Yuan tells her.

"Is it fun?" Letting the camera swing free around her neck, Quinn hops over the peas into the stripe of bare soil between the rows. "Can I try?"

"Um…I guess so…." Bouncing animatedly in place, her fingers tapping and twitching, Yuan thinks he's never seen someone less tree-like in his life. A fast-growing vine, perhaps, or rattling long grass, but definitely not a tree. "Well first just…hold still."

"I am holding still," Quinn protests, hands dancing impatiently on her knees. "Now what?"

He supposes that may be as still as she will get, so he leans forward, burying his hands into the soil again. "You gotta put down roots. Like this. Dig 'em down. Not like that!" he admonishes, as she scrapes away eagerly at the dirt. "Slower."

Chastened, the little girl quiets a bit, wriggling her fingers in the dark soil. Yuan struggles to put into words what goes through his mind when he puts down roots.

"That's better. Just concentrate on, um, you know, reaching down and stuff—"

"Oh!"

For a moment Yuan thinks she felt it, the earth and slow-growing sleepiness and warmth of wellbeing that he always feels when he's 'being a tree', as Quinn puts it. Far from relaxing, however, Q dives down so her nose is a few scant centimeters from the ground and declares excitedly, "Look! A worm!"

It is indeed. Yuan examines the creature gravely. It waves tentatively in the open air, then begins squirming its way back to shelter.

Click!

"I don't think I would be a tree," Quinn says, dropping her camera back against her thin chest with a painful-sounding thunk and hopping back to her feet, wiping her filthy hands on her pajama trousers. Yuan privately agrees. "D'you think Cookie made waffles today?"

"I dunno. Maybe." He doesn't much care (nutrients are nutrients) but it reminds him again that he is quite hungry. Clambering clumsily to his feet, he limps after Quinn. She moves a lot faster, but it's not hard to keep up because she keeps stopping every time a scrap of flower-color or wind-movement catches her eye to exclaim and click her camera at it.

Two days later, his attention is yanked from his plant biochemistry textbook by an enthusiastic shout.

"Yuan!"

Quinn scrambles up into the chair beside him. "Look," she says happily, shoving something under his nose, then yelps as the stack of photos in her hands goes scattering across the table. "Oops—"

"Keep it down b'fore Addy kick us out," he whispers, mortified, as kids all over the library turn to see what all the noise is and Addison raises his eyebrows, making a volume-dial gesture with one hand.

"I being quiet!" Quinn says in a stage whisper, standing up on the chair so she can heap all of her photographs back into a haphazard pile. Glancing over the pictures, Y notices the one of the pea blossoms, a shell-pale cloud of porcelain curves glimmering green with early sunlight, and of the rabbit, poised and looking back in such a way that it seems to be gesturing to a friend beyond the frame of the photo. They're all quite eye-catching. Suddenly, another is thrust before his eyes.

"Here it is!"

Yuan has to lean back to see it. It's him, he realizes, astonished. And he doesn't look like he does in the bathroom mirror, either, gangly and knobbly and resigned. The way Quinn cropped the shot, the trees by the garden shed are visible behind him and give the illusion of being the same size. The dappling of the light in his tumbled hair blends almost seamlessly with the light on the leaves and his cinnamon-skinned arms appears almost to be one of their tall trunks. His misshapen foot is hidden by his folded legs, and he looks…peaceful. Like a dryad, Yuan thinks. Like a tree. Q is beaming at him, and he tentatively returns the smile.

"It came out real good, huh? I make a copy for you, hao ba? Here y'go!" Dropping the photo onto his book, Quinn scoops up the other photos in her arms and jumps off the chair again with a clatter. "Bye!"

"Thanks," he says absently, picking up the photo and staring at it.

 

Chapter 26: Laissez-faire

Mello can't see from where he's sitting what this guy is playing, but it's annoying as hell. There's crashing and the roar of hundreds of tiny yelling voices and explosions and other sound effects, all on top of a booming symphonic march that skips like a scratched CD.

The invasion of his study space is intolerable. No one is ever in the game room on Thursday evenings. They're all in the library, studying—which is exactly why Mello is here, doing the same. He doesn't tolerate any sort of distraction while he's reading old case files. He can't focus with any sort of distraction.

And this is more than just sort of a distraction.

Another crash rattles the speakers and Mello's eyes narrow almost to slits. The new guy doesn't even notice. He's completely fixated on his game, slumped back into the couch and his mouth hanging slightly open, hardly blinking. He could very well be dead if it weren't for the spastic movement of his hands over the wireless touchscreen balanced on his knees. Obviously he's new. They've been coming in so fast, as many as one or two a month, that Mello has stopped bothering to keep track. Not only does he not recognize him, but he hasn't fled the heat of Mello's glare yet.

"Do you mind?" he finally says, loading as much poison as he can (which is probably enough to drop a horse) into his words.

"Huh?" New guy startles. "Uh, nah. Go ahead," he mumbles distractedly, not seeming to be aware of or care about what it is precisely that he's replying to.

Being ignored is not something Mello responds to very well.

With a slam, Mello snaps the heavy book of case files shut. "Hopefully some time in ESL will clarify the finer points of English nuance that seem to be lost on you," he snarls. "I mind."

"Oh. This bothering you?" Without breaking eye contact with the game, he feels around on the couch with one hand, finds the remote half-stuck between the cushions, and turns down the volume. "Why're you studying in here? Isn't there a library or something?"

"People know not to break my concentration when I'm in here," Mello says pointedly. It always helps to throw his reputation around a little. This kid seems older than most of the new kids, closer to his own age, so may be more difficult to intimidate; but time and the stories others tell about him always get them eventually.

"Huh." He doesn't seem impressed or intimidated. He still has the exact same expression as he did before Mello even spoke up, one of slack-jawed concentration. "You must be one of the Twins. You the White or the Black?"

"WHAT did you say?"

Now he's livid, and before he is quite conscious of giving the directive to his feet to stand and cross the room he's looming over the insolent stranger, fists trembling and ears burning hot.

The kid slumps over sideways so he can see the giant TV screen, which Mello is blocking. "The Black, then. Mello. So you're not actually Black. You just wear black. I wondered about that."

"Near and I are NOT twins! Or associated in any way!" he bites out.

"Yeah, I know. Some kid said that."

"Who was it?" Mello demands furiously. He hasn't heard the nickname 'Twin' in ages. It brings up painful—no, not painful, he contradicts himself, aggravating—memories of his earlier childhood, when he and Near were actually friendly, before the brat turned into a stuck-up, sneering...well, brat. It seems almost inconceivable now. The name had been branded on them by Even, who said they looked different but sounded the same, whatever that meant. She always creeped him out as a child, in the few months before she was scrubbed. Mello was aware that some of the Crusties might call him and Near the Twins, but he's never heard any of the younger kids using the term. Not in a couple years at least. He didn't think it was still used —why the hell has anyone kept it up? The very thought of the other House students thinking of them as a set incenses him.

Oblivious to the rapid-fire slideshow of rage and offense flickering over Mello's face, the new kid makes the infinitesimal one-shouldered shrug he proffers seem like a Herculean effort. "Uh, I dunno? Some runt? Is there a difference between them?"

Fair enough. Mello often gets the lower-case letters mixed up. Almost all of them seem to be about the same age, Near's age or a year younger, and none of them have shown any likelihood of contesting them for the title. It's the first time he's heard someone else say so, though, and it surprises him when he almost laughs.

Mello can't remember the last time he laughed out loud.

"And who the hell are you?" he snaps instead.

"Matt, I guess." Like an inverted pendulum, 'Matt I guess' lurches upright again and slumps down to the other side. "Look, blocking my line of sight does add a certain level of challenge, but if you really want to make this game harder we could try the multiplayer." He makes a vague gesture with one hand. "Give you something to really get mad about. This thing is buggier than a swamp."

"I'm too busy for games," Mello sneers automatically, but he suddenly feels hollow as he says it, and he realizes with a surge of self-condemning guilt that he'd really rather take a break than pick the book back up.

"Studying, huh?"

"Got a problem with that?"

"Whatev. Suit yourself," Matt says.

He seems no less engaged in his game, but Mello think he sounds a bit disappointed. It's…surprising. None of the other students would ever think to ask him to join them for anything. Not that he wants to. He's not well liked and he doesn't try to be. Mello has better things to do. He doesn't need friends. He's gotten along just fine without friends ever since he and Near became rivals, and he's never missed being friends with that brat, no, not one tiny bit.

…Perhaps a tiny bit. Not Near, mind you. Just…having someone to talk to about both classwork and things that aren't classwork.

"What the hell is this stupid game, anyway?" he says, turning on his heel to glare at the screen.

"Demo 3.8."

It looks like a demo. An army of red stick figures swarm and stumble over a grid landscape, attacking a wall guarded by blue stick figures. The view freezes and stutters momentarily as Matt zooms out to show that it's not just a wall, but a many-tiered sprawling fortress, with several different bands of red figures using different tactics: from catapults to digging to a group that seems to be trying to start a landslide on the hill the fortress is built against. Parts of the grid flicker every so often, and every once in a while entire platoons simply disappear.

"Where did you get this piece of crap?" Mello asks, arching his brows disdainfully as Matt herds a few stick figures who have apparently forgotten their orders back toward the fortress.

"Whatshername. Older chick. Always looks like she's being put on the spot. Harmony or something."

"Concord?"

"Sure? I guess she and the guy with the huge nose wrote it a few years back. Pretty flexible gameplay. Really buggy. Makes it more interesting though. For some reason if you can get enough guys running straight at a block of wall with a window in it, that part of the wall just goes poof. Kinda cool. See, watch this."

It takes a moment for him to round up enough troops (the individual stick figures seem to be pretty stupid, wandering off when they're not being supervised) but sure enough, once the column starts running they pass right through the fortress wall.

"Haha, this is the funny part."

Mello watches, bemused, as Matt's soldiers start pushing the blue soldiers that swarm to meet them into the square that used to be wall. Suddenly the wall snaps back into existence, leaving the enemy figures trapped, little stick legs waving from the solid structure as though they're still running. Matt chuckles madly.

It is pretty funny.

Matt is tolerable, Mello decides. He's going to scrub out within months with that lackadaisical attitude, of course, but the blonde gets the impression he wouldn't care much. That's intriguing. He's certainly no threat, but he's not a whiny little wuss like most of the kids around here either.

And he'd almost forgotten what it was like to not be fighting. Not to be constantly defending himself, or striking first to head off a potential attack. He doesn't have this kid cowed, like he does all the others he has no reason to be afraid of—it's more like competing is just more effort than the other boy is willing to expend.

"Fine then," Mello says exasperatedly, as though Matt has been nagging him all this time. "Where's the other keypad?"

Chapter 27: Police

"Right then!" Qarri barks, to bring her little group to order.

It's a bit of an odd crew, Zane and Hunter and little Ochre, who Q wasn't sure was even old enough to play in the annual Hack ACME game until Gao, their team captain, sent her the team rosters. She's a right little curmudgeon for someone so young. But Z and H know the drill and will probably work well together, with their respective obsessions with measurements and graphs, and O will just have to learn doublequick. Besides, though she doesn't trust him as far as she could throw him, Qarri concedes that G's judgment in matters of personnel is excellent, and he wouldn't have put them all together as the team tech squad if they couldn't handle their task.

Everybody looks forward to summer at the House, though it's no holiday despite having no classes—if anything, their work during the summer is more grueling than the other three terms. But it's also the fun work. Summer is when they have their concerts and demos and presentations and little science fairs, and have the chance to show off what they've been working on. There are scary things too, like field trips to Outside museums and companies and the planetarium, and in the last few years the older students learning to drive (a source of both hilarity and mild terror for younger students and staff alike, as the nervous teenagers who aren't ready for the road yet go rocketing around the yard with Hopkins the groundskeeper in his souped-up golf cart).

But easily the most anticipated part of summer is the thirty days in July and August that mark the span of the Hack ACME game, or HackMe, as the students have come to call it. It's become better and better every year as there are more students to participate and the judges get better at assigning the four teams evenly. Qarri still holds a grudge over the memorable game two years ago, when Concord and Matt were both put on the ACME Corporation team and jointly came up with an impenetrable encryption system that none of the other programmers (such as Q) had been able to crack.

This year Qarri's team is the Police, so she's now been on each team once (the other three being ACME Corporation, the Hackers, and the Media). She's wanted to be on this team all along, and now that she finally is she is determined that this year her team is finally going to win. All year she's had to put up with that snotty Isabel's petty smirking over how her team won last HackMe. Now that she's Police and Isabel is Media, Q will have the unmitigated pleasure of putting that blond witch out of the game for two days every time she lies in the daily Media report—which Qarri is certain will be often, as she can't help it. The thought brings a warm glow to her grudge-bearing little heart.

"So. Where we start?" Hunter prompts, bringing Qarri out of her reverie.

"Ok!" Irritated to be caught daydreaming, she taps on the whiteboard with a meterstick. They're meeting in Hunter's room because no one from other teams will be able to spy (Qarri made a sweep for bugs already) and he somehow convinced Marta to allow him, with some help from Paran and Hopper, to install several floor-to-ceiling panels of marker board on moving tracks along one wall.

"Right, ACME team get the Red Stack at 6 am, in half hour," Qarri says, indicating the scorebox labeled ACME with a sharp rap of the ruler. Hunter winces. "We can expect Concord will get that one all boxed up by midnight tonight, so gotta strike asap or we gonna be hackin' her wall."

"Concord on ACME again?" Ochre says flatly. The look of grumpy solemnity that seems to be permanently stamped on her small, pouty face deepens slightly. "She on that one when alla other team all score negative, da?"

Qarri scowls. "Yes," she says shortly. "But she only programmer on ACME team this year. But they got Jitter and Near, so they strategy gonna be tight. And you oughta know that already, O, Gao send out the rosters last night. Pay 'tenshun."

Ochre frowns, leaning forward in Hunter's bean bag to prop her elbows on her knees and plop her chin into her hands.

"S'k then. They got the Red Stack. We gotta get those files, or at least tag them—"

"What the Red Stack?"

Qarri eyes the younger girl with burgeoning dislike and Zane lets his tape measure slide home with a loud clap.

"You even read the rulebook?" Hunter asks, giving Ochre an incredulous look.

"Ok look here fishie," Qarri snaps. "Red Stack is a buncha files on Wham server 'bout ACME's 'illegal' activities. This year it bribing politicians or something like that—"

"Story go they rigged a town election to get support to build a dam," Hunter interjects.

"—right, so we the Po-leez gotta get all them files an' prove what they did. An' we gotta keep the Hackers and the Media from gettin' em, or from gettin' our information about ACME, or from lettin' on what we doin'. An' if we don't get a move on now, we got no advantage and we stuck wastin' points on bribes and Gao and Devon never gonna stop bitchin' bout it. So read the rulebook and take this serious! We gotta win this year!" Qarri growls, getting more and more heated as she speaks.

"'K fine, I got it, go on with the plan," Ochre sighs.

"Right I will. Now—" seizing a red marker, Qarri starts scribbling pseudocode on the board. "C won't leave the Stack unprotected before she can get up a new wall for it, but it take time. Can't use old tricks for a new game but she might for temps. This the basic program she use last time—" She shakes Hunter off as he attempts to swipe the marker out of her hand. "—What you doin', eh?"

"Don't press so hard, you gonna smash the tip of the marker in and then it useless," H says, snatching it away. "Just let me do it."

Zane lets out an annoyed sigh from where he's sprawled on the floor.

Qarri keeps her voice down with a massive effort. "Look, am I the only one who wanna win this thing or what? You want I go, say 'sorry G, you wormie tech squad can't even sneak a peek at a Ev'rest-size kablammo of semi-walled files—just go tell th'other captains we surrender—'"

"What about this bit here. Concord use this algorithm a lot," Hunter says defensively, circling several lines of Qarri's writing. "Easy to tag with a Tex-Pack virus."

"If we could do that we could plant a proteus copy, sneak him in there before she set up the wall and read what she do when she upload it," Zane agrees, idly stretching his arms as far apart as he can and checking the resulting span on the tape measure.

"Heck, we could block C's access to the server for a few minutes at least and try to get the files before she does," Ochre suggests, throwing up her hands.

"That more like it!" Qarri says, grinning fiercely. All or none of those might work, but it's the attitude that makes the difference, and the only attitude Q finds acceptable for this game is relentless, grudge-avenging gusto. "We better get started first on blocking C and intercepting the Stack. Two more start-off ideas in next five minutes, then we start implementation. Here the—fine, Hunter, take the blakaba marker—here the specs for Wham server—"

And so summer kicks into gear.

Chapter 28: Rocket Science

"Ready?" Raphael yells, bonking her helmet excitedly into Train's.

"Ready!" Train blares back in her face, bonking her back with equal enthusiasm.

"Round the shed roof and back round the garden twenny time! Right?"

"Right!"

"Ok, Karter!" R shouts at the top of her lungs, even though K is standing right next to her. "We ready!"

A stopwatch in each hand, the older boy answers with an eager salute. "Okaaaay!—Ready—set—GO!"

The instant K's thumbs jam the stopwatches, the two model planes tear down the launch ramp, roaring and spitting blue flames, and fling themselves into the air. Grinning like a pair of maniacs, R and T throw their entire bodies into working their remote controls, nearly whacking each other as they swerve them about wildly. In less than five seconds the hand-built stealth jets, each nearly a half meter across, have veered in a tight circle over the garden shed and are screaming by.

A few kids (along with the Professor Kepple, who's videotaping this experiment for later review, and several nervous aides wielding fire extinguishers) are cheering and heckling from the front steps, but Raphael doesn't hear them; all that's in her head is velocity and centrifugal force and the dopplering roar of the planes, and the imagined tick of the stopwatch.

One of these models, upon striking someone at their current speed, could probably seriously maim someone on impact, even kill them. Kepple helped them put up a plexifort bunker for Raphael, Train, and Karter, and everyone else has to stay a good way back. They're lucky they can still race at all—last time one of their planes crashed (Train's, Raphael is happy to remind him whenever he shows some sign of forgetting) it left a skidmark four meters long and twenty centimeters deep in the usually pristine lawn and utterly demolished one of Hopkins' prized apple saplings. The Warden had to intervene directly to secure them permission to continue their aerodynamism experiments. One of the benefits of his knowing more about soldiers than kids is that his idea of what acceptable activities for kids are is a little warped. As long as they don't hurt each other and are being productive, he gives them as loose a rein as Mr. W did, if not more so. Still, R is sure the groundskeeper gives them the evil eye when no one else is looking.

In any case, letting one's attention wander while controlling one of these babies can result in serious damage, whether from the plane or from an enraged Hopkins, so she stays on task—and who would want to daydream right now anyway?

Her stealth fighter, though not very stealthy per se with its acidically pink hull, is a thing of precisely engineered beauty, a fire-spouting work of aluminum-alloy origami. They would have liked to use titanium, but that was where Marta drew the line. Despite that, hers is most definitely about ten zillion times as awesome as Train's, and she's positive it will be faster too, and that she's a better flier. She wheedled Hunter's help in—ah—borrowing a digital copy of T's flight equations (it's only fair, Raphael knows for a fact that Train has probably done the same to her, just because he's Train) and though hers give less maneuverability, they have better speed, so she has the advantage in a linear track like this.

In what seems like a mere instant they've already zipped through fifteen laps.

They're about even, but that's okay—with an extra burst of speed in the last lap she's sure to win. On every turn Train gains slightly, but on every straight stretch she gains slightly more.

But hang on a second—he is gaining!

In a flash of adrenaline chill she realizes that he's actually getting accelerated momentum from his point-wheeling turns, and in the rush of it she has only an instant to think perhaps she can turn just a hair sharper on the last turn and still win, and a tiny snag is all it takes. It's unclear which plane actually collides into which, but the tips of their wings catch and R and T are the only ones who have any forewarning of the spinning, metal-tearing crumple of force and speed that results, careening into the ornamental pond with a colossal splash and billow of steam.

Dimly Raphael becomes aware of the hollering of their little audience on the porch. Karter is staring open-mouthed at the rippling water, looking as though he was slapped in the face with a frozen fish—but his thumbs have automatically hit the stop buttons. Mouth still open, he raises the watches to read them.

"Fifty-six point oh-seven-two seconds," is the verdict.

Her eyes meet Train's. He's obviously thinking the exact same thing she is.

"That was wicked!"

K steps back to avoid the helmet-bonking and high-fiving.

The excitement still hasn't abated five minutes later, as they're wading into the pond to retrieve their fallen planes—hastily, because the last thing they want is for Hopkins to discover they've at minimum petrified his precious koi. Raphael has never heard the grouchy old groundskeeper refer to the pondfish with any particular affection, but the apple trees weren't all that special either 'til they killed one so she's pretty sure they'd turn out to be quite dear to his heart after all if he caught wind that they'd been somehow injured.

Their chattering conversation occasionally interrupted with curses and grunts of effort, they lug the heavy, mud-and-water-logged planes out of the pond, trailing bits of oozy greenery behind them. Their lovely shiny planes are now a pink-and-silver heap of sharp-sheered edges and fzzting electronics, but hey, they flew, didn't they? And did you see how fast? Way better than last time, by a long stretch, and next time will be even better. Even the prospect of writing up their after-test reports on how and why the crash occurred doesn't dampen their spirits.

There is one point of disagreement, of course.

"I alla gonna beat you if we hadn't crashed," Train says, strutting as much as is possible when weighed down with thirty pounds of scrap metal and looking out with a bit of paranoia for a vengeful Hopkins.

"Whaaaaa? Nuh-uh, T, you flyin' hunk'a scrubble bait barely on my tail."

"Pff, ha, yeah. All that girlie-paint weigh it down, prob'ly."

Professor Kepple half-heartedly attempts to act stern over the arguable failure of their experiment, but let's be honest, what engineer doesn't like to watch loud, fast-moving metal objects smash into each other? It's a far cry better than being stuck still in his old windowless closet of an office, shared with that fellow who never stopped clicking his pen and who seemed to have a moral problem with showers, teaching hungover undergraduates who aren't listening anyway that F=ma. He's just happy in the confidence that his students can design and build stealth planes in the first place, and that within a day or two of reviewing the damage and their equations they'll be able to report exactly what happened.

While they've been gingerly poking about in the water for plane bits he's gotten towels and a tarp for them to pile the wreckage on, to save them all from Marta's certain wrath if they got a single molecule of mud or pondwater inside. She's already had to replace the foyer rug once thanks to Train.

Between the three of them they manage to haul it all in the back door and into the physics lab without encountering either Marta or Hopkins, though Constance gives them a raised-brow look as they sneak (insofar as it is possible to sneak while lugging a clanking tarp of metal pieces) through the kitchen. It looks as though they've got off scot-free.

Until they go to scamper back upstairs to change into dry clothes before assessing the damage, and find Hopkins in the entryway with a palm-sized shard of neon pink aluminum alloy in one hand and a you-killed-my-koi kind of look on his craggy face.

"Oh, I was looking for that," says Raphael, making an admirable attempt at a winning smile.

 

Chapter 29: Unchained

One minute left.

It's all happened so fast.

Hands shaking, Fallon writes a name twice on the back of a now worthless page of his international policy notes, rips it in half. Gao takes his half with a terse nod and Jitter takes the other, wiping at his eyes with the back of his hand.

He's lost. His limbs feel heavy and loose in their sockets, and his brain doesn't know what to tell them to do. Everything is blank. This very moment the car is waiting for him in front of the House—no longer his home—and Ma Marta is waiting for him at the door, crying herself, and he knows others are watching—from the stairs, from doorways, listening on the taps, every eye and ear in the House trained on him, including hers, though she's nowhere to be seen. Suddenly he finds himself buried in an embrace; by some kind of consensus that he didn't notice in his blanked-out state, his two best friends have sandwiched him in a bear hug. That's the last straw, and he feels the tears hot on his face.

"As soon as we old enough we gonna come find you," Jitter says hoarsely.

"You gonna be fine," Gao says. "Gonna take those wormbaits apart. No problem."

He's never believed in God but F prays that they're both right.

One day left.

It takes several seconds for Dr. Torres' words to sink in.

"No," he says, too stunned to say anything else. "No—"

"This isn't a punishment, Fallon," the psychiatrist says gently. "This is for your own protection."

"But—I've been taking the meds again like I was supposed to, I swear I've been taking them all—I can do better—"

"Fallon," she says, trapping his hands in hers and meeting his eyes earnestly. "I know you're doing your best. It's not that we don't think you're trying. It's just that…the demands and stress here are doing more harm than help. They'll be able to take better care of you at Cygnet—"

Does this woman not understand that that's even worse, that he'd much rather there be something he could do to prove that he can handle things, instead of being told that he's a hopeless case? Yanking his hands away, F curls up into the chair, wrapping his arms around himself and rocking, shaking his head frantically. She's saying other things, maybe logical, maybe comforting, none of it what he wants to hear. Before he probably would have screamed, struggled, hit her, but he's already beaten down, so what would be the point?

"Please," he begs, last-ditch. "Please don't send me out there—"

Five days left.

Fallon has only been in Roger's office once or twice, and that when he was much younger. Usually Ma Marta takes care of discipline, as it's well known that the Warden is a busy, business-minded sort of man who dislikes dealing with people face-to-face—especially children. F is not exactly a child anymore, but he's already about as low as he gets (seafloor low, crushing lightless deepsea low), and knowing that Roger probably sees his presence here as a nuisance makes him feel chastised before the old man even opens his mouth.

"We have investigated the accusations Kae has made against you," the Warden says, peering over his glasses at him.

Fallon knows he didn't take advantage of K. They never even went all the way. Knowing it doesn't mean he can prove it though. The security footage will have been useless, because though they were publicly going out, they did make efforts to have as much privacy as was really plausible. The timing is suspect, and that counts in his favor; K's claims look like revenge (and that's exactly what it is, he's sure) but that in itself isn't proof of his innocence.

What it all comes down to is Icarus.

He never hid anything from Gao and Jitter, so they know the truth, but everyone knows they'd happily lie for him if they had to. Concord, Dex, and Hopper would be reliable, but they've refused to take sides—probably the best move for them, and disappointing but not unexpected. Linda would say whatever she had to in questioning to wheedle out more information from the questioner, making her useless as a witness, even if she did know anything. Interrogating the Twins or lower would be a waste of time.

Icarus, though—F is sure Kae confided in Icarus after the time they almost…did it. But the two of them have been best friends for years, and right now, Fallon is also sure that Icarus lied to save her friend's reputation.

"I have come to the conclusion that her allegations are false," says the headmaster. Fallon nods numbly, feeling as though he ought to be relieved but it hasn't broken through yet. Thank you, thank you, thank you, Icarus.

"However," he goes on. "Your behavior over the last few days has given the matron and Dr. Torres some concern for your safety. It has come to our attention that you stopped taking the medication Dr. Torres prescribed to you, resulting in the possibility of self-harm and considerable emotional distress."

What a way to put it, Fallon thinks vaguely, 'Considerable emotional distress,' hell. I sure hope the Warden never had kids. They'd be more messed up than me.

"You are to resume your medication immediately, and you will be excused from your classes until Dr. Torres is satisfied that your emotional state is stabilized."

"Yes, sir."

One week left.

He's Prometheus unchained, he could break through a cement wall with his bare hands right now if he wanted to, hell, he could fly over the roof in one bound. It's not like it was, way back when, when he blazed and dove and skyrocketed, he's been cheeking his pills for a week but he took them for a long time before that and it takes time for them to wear off. Still it's like he sees color—through a thin film, but the colors are finally there. And he can scream, yeah, scream like a jet coming down on your head, scream until your eardrums and eyeballs implode from the force of it.

So he does.

Kae shrieks back, but she's so damn average she can't hope to compete with him, not at this—at calling the storm and letting it rush through him until he's not the one in control anymore, tearing out the words he wanted to say and never did, and the words he needed to say but didn't dare, and the words he never realized were lurking in his mind in a thick soup of bitter resentment until they were stirred to the surface by the shock of betrayal. They've fought before, but not like this.

People buzz around him but he brushes and punches them off like bugs. They've always watched, watched every second to see what he and K did next, waiting keenly for the experiment to run its course and taking their scratchy little notes on their clipboards and nodding and frowning—well they're getting a show now, aren't they, a showdown right in the middle of dinner like fireworks and barbed wire and lightning in a blender. They're not important. What's important is letting K know what a gutter-crawling, lying bitch she is, that the only reason she has to cling to a smarter, more interesting person is because she has no talent or personality of her own, that if she hadn't asked for it he would never have even touched her.

Two weeks left.

"I can't do this anymore," Fallon says.

"Then put it down for a bit," K replies distractedly, chewing on the end of her pen as she skims the page she's reading. They're studying in his room, sitting on the bed with her legs slung over his. "The history quiz coming up. Work on that a bit."

The book in his lap is a few inches thick and dense as a rock, but it's nothing compared to shackling weight of Kae's slender legs.

Everything seems heavy, has ever since he started the pills.

It's not a roller coaster anymore, at least. He doesn't bounce back and forth from doing thirty laps a day for months at a time to spending a month unable to do more to lie down on the floor of the pool for as long as he can hold his breath and stare up through the rippling blue. To tell the truth, Fallon hasn't gone swimming in weeks. He thinks he might seep down to the bottom if he tried and not be able to get back up.

There's just a lot going on. Final spring deadlines. The fluid dynamics term project. The deal he and Jitter are trying to work out with Qarri to renew their rights to listen in on her bugs in the staff offices. Starting to pre-strategize for Hack Acme. F is exhausted.

And this whole thing with Kae on top of it…it's…it's just a lot. She always needs. Needs time, needs affection. Needs someone to talk to. Needs support and reassurance. It makes him feel even more exhausted and inadequate. He's terrible at predicting and dealing with her needs, especially the fleeting and ever-changing emotional ones, and though part of him wants to be there for her, a growing part of him is just…tired. Tired of trying to read her, tired of being read incorrectly by her, tired of being scrutinized by everyone like they're some sort of human chemistry experiment that is expected to fizzle any second, tired of the expectations and obligations and constant walking on eggshells that this relationship demands.

"That not what I meant," he finally says, and Kae looks up vacantly, the end of the pen still caught at the corner of her mouth and her mind clearly still fixed on ceramic heat retention.

"Eh?" She blinks a few times. "…you gonna crash early?"

"Not that," he says again, struggling to frame his tiredness into words that she'll understand without him having to state it explicitly. She's going to be hurt and upset, and he's dreading it. Dreading letting her down. That's why it's taken him long to say anything at all. Not looking at her, Fallon gestures vaguely between them.

"I don't understand," says Kae, but when he glances at her, her expression says she's beginning to, and she's not happy at all.

And she's hurt and upset, just like he dreaded, and she fights it, and he's too tired to really fight back, just repeats himself over and over until finally she storms out, disgusted and snapping, "Naozhong! You were a lot better off without those wormbait pills!"

 

Chapter 30: Kamikaze

The program isn't working.

Concord can see the entire thing in her mind's eye, the thousands of steps and statements and ifs and thens, the swapping of variables from this function to that like marbles ticking through a maze. It's not working though, and figuring out why means starting at the beginning of the maze and testing the path at every single turn.

It's long, tedious, thankless work, and C loves every minute of it. Humming tunelessly to herself in the silence of the media lab, she picks her way methodically through the maze, barely aware of her surroundings.

"—and you shouldn't bring that damn thing in here!"

The slam of the media lab door and an irritated voice snap her out of her almost meditative state. Concord ducks down automatically behind her giant monitor, peering around the edge of it. She hates getting trapped in conversation. Going unnoticed, she's learned, is the best way to avoid it.

And all the better, because it's that evil little wretch Mello, with his just-as-evil little shadow padding along behind him. Concord sighs silently to herself. She's not very good at picking up on other people's feelings, but she hates conflict, and even Concord is not so oblivious not to have picked up on the fact that the Twins are a never-ending dogfight trapped in the bodies of two brilliantly mean little kids. Silently, she watches from the back of the room as Mello flings himself dramatically into a computer chair and starts booting up, still grousing. "What if it pisses on the keyboard, huh?"

"Barton doesn't care if I bring her in here," Near says boredly, transferring the cat to the crook of his arm as he clambers into the seat next to Mello's. "She trained."

"Trained, my ass," Mello mutters. "That rat is a vicious little—"

"I never say she was trained not to bite. When you done griping, we perhaps focus on this assignment, hao ba?"

Mello says something under his breath that Concord doesn't quite catch, and Near retorts coolly, "You have your pet and I have mine. Mine at least was imposed upon me."

"Is that a hint of bitterness I detect?" Mello sneers. "Wishing you had a real-live friend, instead of imaginary ones and rodents? "

"'Friend' is a generous term. Matt find you entertaining, and you isolated and desperate for attention."

Concord listens, interested despite herself and wishing Dex and Hopper were around. It's becoming apparent that this isn't quite the same as the never-ending sniping over each other's intelligence and abilities. Everyone knows (and has been snickering about) the new academic program, which is obviously designed to get the Twins to work in tandem. If nothing else, it's certainly forcing them to spend a lot of time together. Does this mean things are getting worse between them, or better? Dex would probably be able to read it from this or that wording or the tones of their voices. All her stunted instincts are telling her are that this isn't a conversation they'd be having if they knew anyone was listening, and that Mello hates cats.

Anything she can observe and relate back to D and H might prove to be interesting, though, so she cranes a little farther thinking she might catch a glimpse of their expressions, shifting her keyboard out of her way.

"You're one to—what was that?" Immediately Mello's head whips around, and hot blue eyes catch hers through the rows of computer screens.

Dammit.

"What're you doing, skulking around and spying back there?" the boy demands, jolting up out of his chair.

And as always happens when anyone asks her an unexpected question, Concord's mind goes completely blank.

"Um," she stalls, and behind the cover of the monitor silently keys a quick ! to Hopper's email. It's a bit stupid, calling for help for something as trivial as being stuck in the lab with the Twins, but Concord learned long ago she has no talent whatsoever for disengaging herself from such situations with any semblance of grace.

Which Mello also knows, of course. The little bastard.

"Um," he repeats, mimicking her. "Words of true genius, that."

"I'm not skulking," the words finally come, lame and belated and far more defensive than she would have liked.

"Right. It just looked that way, seeing as how you were lurking behind your computer there listening in and trying not to make a sound," Mello replies, nodding in mock agreement. "Something any normal person might have done, I'm sure. Except those rare outliers with the guts to handle the presence of human beings with reactions other than sticking their heads in the sand, but what do they have to do with anything?"

In her semi-paralyzed state the exasperating thought occurs to Concord that tonight while unable to sleep she'll probably come up with half a dozen scathing comebacks. Right now she's got nothing though, so she just glares back at Mello, who's sneering in that nasty superior way of his. Near seems content to remain silent, observing and ducking his head a little to conceal his smirk.

It's absolutely galling that one of these two is going to succeed L. Concord grew resigned to the fact that they were the best candidates in terms of their particular mental skills years ago, finally giving up on any personal hope for the succession and pursuing her interest in programming, which she prefers to investigative work anyway. But she still thinks others are better suited personality-wise—Dex and Fallon and Even all would have made perfectly good L's, even Gao if he weren't such a little crook, and the fact that F and E are both gone and the Twins are not despite all their cruel shenanigans sticks her like a thistle in her sock.

Finally, mercifully, the door swings open again for her rescue party. "Concord? You still in here?" Dex calls out, Hopper right behind him. "We were wondering if you…huh." They stop short on seeing the two younger boys. "…Mello. Near," he says, in the sort of tone one might normally employ when stuck talking to the socially awkward cousin everyone avoids at a family reunion.

"The tin man and the scarecrow come to save Dorothy," Mello observes, matching him for condescension. "Convenient to have such attentive lapdogs, isn't it, Concord?"

Concord turns bright red, wishing furiously that she had a clever retort and that she didn't have to depend on Hopper to laugh it off and for Dex to say boredly, "Yes, in the parallel universe where everything revolve around you, that exactly why we lookin' for our friend. In this one, though, people not so focused on you. I know that must be difficult for you to understand."

"Strange that in a universe that doesn't revolve around me, you spend so much time prying into our business."

"Well you see, M," Hopper says. "It's hard to look away. I hear train wrecks the same way. You don't want to look but there just something about unstoppable self-destruction that fascinates people."

"Unstoppable self-destruction?" Mello scoffs. "People watching train wrecks at least know not to jump in the way of the crash. You three just like meddling. You can't stand for anything that goes on in this place to be out of your jurisdiction. You have to intervene."

"We wouldn't have to intervene if you could act like civilized human beings and not like a pair of mutts sniffing after the same bitch," Dex says coolly.

Mello swells with rage, ears glowing red, and Near interjects smoothly, "Big words for someone who was out of the running years ago."

Hopper frowns, and Concord tenses. This is exactly what she hoped to avoid, not instigate. Dex's jaw is working in that way that means he'd really, really like to hit someone, but is holding himself back. She'd like nothing more than to get up and say never mind them, let's just go, but that would be backing down and there's nothing D despises more. Even she and Hopper together will be hard pressed to drag him off now until he feels like he's won.

"Right," Mello snaps, shooting an irritated look at Near but still recovering before Dex, "right, because your intervention always does everybody so much good. Just look how helpful it was for Alternate."

It takes a moment for what he said to sink in. The instant it does is like being struck across the face with the hooked side of a hammer.

Dex's face goes stark white. "What did you say?" he says very, very quietly, but Concord doesn't hear him. Afterward she doesn't remember getting up out of her chair, either, or going down the row to the front of the lab, just how terribly, terribly angry Mello's smirk makes her as she stand over him, barely able to speak for how badly she's shaking and stammering out, "D-Don't you—don't dare—don't you say that to him—"

"Aw, so it does talk," Mello says, unthreatened. Concord has never hit anyone before, but she's dizzy with fury, and she wants to so badly it hurts.

Instead she gathers the hurt, uses it to force out, "You don't know what you talking about, Mello. You—you don't know a damn thing about it—"

"Concord," D says, and she nearly jumps out of her skin at the weight of his hand on her shoulder, and is distantly annoyed to realize her eyes are welling up with how angry she is that Mello would even think of bringing up A and B and talking like that to Dex, after everything—after—she can practically hear Backup laughing, the memory is so sharp, and the way D staggered, running after the monster with his nightshirt soaked with blood—

"I know a lot more than you think," Mello says, enjoying the effect his words have on the usually silent programmer. "Did you know he became a serial killer, after running away? Too bad nobody stopped him. One of them was a little girl, I hear. He crushed her eyes after—"

It's a good thing that Hopper is stronger than both of them and Mello has at least the sense to back away, or it's entirely plausible that D and C may have torn him in half between them before H's insistent, "Guys—he just talking scrap—guys—" broke through to them.

Mello, flushing a little for having stepped back at all, regains his cocky smirk almost instantly. "So you didn't know," he says. "I hadn't thought so. Well, now you do. Something to think over."

"Perhaps you ought to go," Near adds, as Dex tenses under Hopper's restraining hand again. "Before you damage your reputation for imperturbability further." A complacent almost-smile touches the corners of his mouth. "We were working before your…interruption."

"Like it matter," Dex snaps, a touch of bitterness creeping through, "Work or don't work, everybody know one'a you gonna be L and it won't be because you deserve it, you just happen to be the Warden's favorite little tools."

"That's nice, Dex. I always thought you thought such petty expressions of jealousy were beneath you," Mello says softly, eyes glittering with malice.

"It doesn't matter, D," Concord murmurs, and suddenly she is calm again. Because Dex is right. He's not going to be L, and neither are she nor Hopper, and something has just occurred to her: after the House, none of this is going to matter—not L or the Twins or the Warden or any of it. There are better things to think about, more important things to plan for. They're getting older. She's beginning to realize what she has to do. It's time to go, and though she may do anything on the way out that she can to keep Mello from ever having L's power, it's no longer their battle. D's fist loosens when she touches it, and she takes his hand. "Let's go."

"Running away with your tail 'tween your legs?" Mello sneers.

"You're nothing but trash, Mello," Concord tells him quietly. For a split second there's a flash of something in his cruel blue eyes, and she knows with uncharacteristic perception that she's actually hit a weak spot, though she has no idea what it is and probably never will.

And then they go.

Chapter 31: Debt

Fwump!

Wiley finds herself yet again flat on her back on the mat, gasping to reclaim her breath and staring at the paneled ceiling. By the time this term is over she'll have every centimeter of it memorized.

Xie leans over her, heart-shaped face tilted in not-quite-concern. "Y'ok, Dubs?"

The twit hasn't even broken a sweat.

"'Mind me again why I sign to this blakabaka," Wiley groans.

"For fun an' exa-size," X deadpans.

It's a purely rhetorical question. Bull suggested Xie try learning a martial art, to acclimate herself to bodily contact and perhaps gain a little confidence from being able to physically defend herself if needed. Determined to overcome her own fears, Xie agreed, but special measures still needed to be taken. The sensei is a woman, and X refuses to practice sparring with a boy. Few students were interested in learning judo at all; Over and Jordan were the only ones who signed up. Well, so, Xie needed a judo partner. And Wiley owed her a big favor, because she would never have gotten through Reading Mandarin for Science Research last term without her.

So here she is. On the floor. Again. For someone who almost cried with dread a last week when told to step onto the mat and attempt a grapple, Xie is getting painfully good at throwing.

"Up," comes sensei Hayato's brusque voice. "Up, up!"

Suppressing a groan, Wiley drags her sorry bum up off the ground and twitches her gi back into place. How does everyone else's stay so neat? Over and Jordan and Xie all seem to have this whole judo thing down pat, their movements sharp and disciplined and purposeful, while Wiley is a gangly scramble of limbs that all want to go in different directions.

Hayato more or less tells her exactly this, though in sterner and more technical terms. The tiny sensei dresses her down for her terrible form, slapping her hand down when W automatically raises it to chew on a snagged fingernail. After a lot of resigned nodding and agreeing and assuring Hayato of her intent to work harder, she's directed to try again.

Fwump!

Ping pong. Why couldn't Xie need her to help her learn to play ping pong? Wiley rocks at ping pong, and at darts and archery and various other activities that do not involve being slammed around like a rag doll by a girl who she's got a good handspan in height on. But no, of all the bloody things—

On the other side of the room, Jordan manages to throw Over to the mat. Oh my God. Even the narcoleptic kid is kicking my bum, Wiley thinks, silently cursing Xie, Reading Mandarin for Science Research, Hayato, and her own lanky limbs indiscriminately.

Somehow she manages to get through the wretched class with most of her body parts more or less attached and where they belong. Aching all over, she dodges out the moment Hayato is done lecturing them and escapes to the sanctuary of her room.

Crash and Echo are already there, naturally; they've cleared a space for themselves on her floor and appear to be struggling through the sociology notes that Faris and Vince gave them in exchange for their old physics notes.

"'Ow was the joo-doo?" Crash asks as Wiley hobbles into her room, closing the door behind her, just barely remembering that she's not supposed to open and shut it again four times as Echo likes. Bull's asked them to help with their friend's tuning by not encouraging her compulsions, and they forget sometimes out of sheer habit but they're getting better. E looks up with a smile that quirks sympathetically when she sees the look on W's face.

"Blow like Krakatoa," W groans, stepping over Echo's sprawled-out form and flopping face-first onto her bed.

"What, you not the joo-doo master yet, Dub? What X got you doin', 'oldin' 'er water bottle and watchin'?" Crash laughs, yelping then laughing harder when Wiley fumbles on the bedside table for one of her hacky sacks throws it at her friend with unerring aim.

"Maybe get better with practice," Echo says. "Only been what, two weeks?"

"Two more week'a dis and I be dead anyhow," Wiley grumbles self-pityingly into her mattress.

"Hnn, she not lettin' you off you favor that easy." Flipping over Vince's notes and scowling at a list of definitions, Echo frowns. "Any of this make sense to you? He already knew alla this crap, barely explain a thing."

"Not a speck," C grumbles. "F's short'and look almost like Chinese to me."

"Shoulda asked to see the notes before trading," Echo says, clicking her pen in annoyance. One-two-three-four, one-two-three-four.

"Get Xie to help you with it," suggests Wiley, rolling over to peer down at the notes. "Then you owe her and you can learn judo."

"Nuh-uh, no thanks," says E, and C giggles madly. "We leave that one to you, oh joo-doo mast-ah."

Not surprising, of course. It's a House full of supernerds and geeks. They're here for their brains, not their physical prowess. Raina has to almost physically drag some of the students out for mandatory outside fitness play.

"I hate you both," W says matter-of-factly, then sighs, catching her finger at the corner of her mouth and biting the nail morosely. "X tryin'a kill me and you just laugh. Some friends."

"Pff. Just think, some day we be accosted by baddies and you gonna fight them off," says Echo.

"Blind-folded with you 'ands be'ind you back," Crash agrees. "They won't know what comin'."

"I suppose there some percent chance that I maybe fall on them and accidentally break they necks," Wiley sighs.

"Oh, stop that. 'Ere." Automatically W's hand snaps up to catch the juggling ball that C tosses up at her before it hits her in the face. Rooting through the piles of junk on the floor and under the bed, Echo and Crash find five more between them and chuck them up as well. "And while you jugglin' think about sociology, not the hoodoo-joodoo. Not much better for you mood but at least we might be ready for this blakaba test."

It's nice to be in control of something after feeling so helplessly out of control for an hour, Wiley muses, both of her own movement and of part of her environment, and decides for about the forty-sixth time that she hates judo and is ready for this term to be over.

Chapter 32: Slide

Most of the time when Jordan falls asleep in class Faris just lets it slide. The professors all know he can't help it, they've started taking video recordings of class so he can catch up later, and he always wakes up again after ten minutes anyway. But it's a special guest lecture today and F knows Jordan has been aggressively researching the man's work and is determined to confront his opinion of postmodernist literature, which J totally opposes. He would cut out his own tongue rather than miss the opportunity to tell this guy he's wrong. So as unobtrusively as he can, Faris stomps down on his friend's foot with his heel.

Immediately J's head snaps up, hand shooting straight at the ceiling.

"Right but how did you address the Cranston critiques published in 2006?" he blurts out, not opening his eyes until halfway through the question.

Caught mid-sentence, the speaker pauses, blinks rapidly, and clears his throat. "Ah, well, I will get to that," he says in a flustered sort of way. "As I was saying..."

Jordan looks just as startled as the literature professor, shaking his head a little to wake himself up and pinching his arms, hard.

They end up having to do this twice more throughout the course of the presentation (it thoroughly discombobulates the poor professor when his loudest critic's head falls to his desk with a loud crack in the middle of one of his own arguments). Lately Verity has been making him take naps after every meal, so he's been much better at staying awake through class, but this special presentation was scheduled for right after lunch so it's pretty inevitable.

"That was fun! Wannit fun? I thought it was fun," Jordan half-says, half-shouts as he tramps up the stairs and Faris shuffles along behind him.

F supposes it was fun. It was certainly funny, watching the discourse between his friend, who has no concept of vocal volume, and the relatively shy and anxious professor who clearly felt uncertain about lecturing to kids.

"Haha, did you see he face? He don' like those questions, no," Jordan blares. The more pleased he is the harder he stomps, so his small feet sound like elephant feet on the wooden stairs. "Wannit great? Hey, we got an hour still b'fore class. What you wanna do now?"

Risk! Faris thinks immediately, perking slightly, he wants to play Risk. He's been watching Dex and Hopper and Gao and Jitter play together for ages but they don't want to play with the younger kids and he just finally convinced Vince and Jordan to try it for the first time last week.

"Ugh, you prolly wanna play Risk again, da?" Jordan groans, and for good reason. F didn't learn nothing from watching the Crusties play. He has trounced his friends every time thus far. If they'd practice more though he's sure they'd get better and it would be a more fun and challenging game for all of them.

"We play Risk every day last three day. Don' you ever wanna do somethin' different?" J says (speaking up presumably for the benefit of people who might be listening to their conversation from the Continent), then interrupts himself with a monstrous yawn.

"Tired," Faris observes.

"I swear, F, you worse than Ma Verity, alla time naggin' me to take you nap, take you nap. I'm not—tiiiiiired," he argues, yawning again.

There's a sudden squeal and stifled laughter from around the corner up ahead, and then Geia zips by in front of them, skidding across the hardwood floor on her socks. Zane runs by shortly after, pulling one end of his measuring tape.

"Four-point-six-fourmeters," comes his voice from around the other corner, and Geia crows with triumph.

"Ha, take that, Nina!"

Coming up on the hallway, Faris can see that a group of students have set up a small contest space. There's a short line of kids in socks waiting impatiently behind a stripe of yellow tape on the floor at one end, a red stripe somewhat closer, and a dispersed series of smaller pieces of tape scattered on the other end of the hall with letters and distances written on them. Zane runs back to the line with the tape measure, grinning at J and F as he passes.

"Wanna play?" Hunter calls to them from where he's sitting in his doorway. Apparently he has taken on the task of marking people's stopping points; he has a roll of yellow tape on one arm and a piece of it on every finger.

"Looks like fun! How 'bout this, F, how 'bout it? Still wanna play Risk or you think we can show these fishies how to shift it?"

It does look pretty fun, Faris supposes. He'd rather play Risk, of course, but then there's the fact that they can play Risk almost any time, but getting a large group together like this is harder; most of the House kids are pretty introverted and tend to stick to themselves or in groups of two or three unless prodded. And anyway, judging by the tape marks he thinks they have a pretty good chance of doing well.

He shrugs.

"Alrighty then, step aside, step aside!" Jordan says, galloping over to the line.

"'ey now, s'not you turn, gotta go in order," Aris snaps, pointing to Nina, Echo, and Una, in line behind her.

"Wha-hey, an' how many times you gone already? Not even gonna let us catch up?" J flings a dramatic hand at the scatter of tape pieces down the hall.

Una rolls her eyes a little, and Faris has to agree. The two of them exchange a wry look behind their friends' backs.

"Everyone but Aris gone twice," Zane interjects, and Hunter adds from down the hall, "And Aris winning."

"Oh 'zat so! Well then A! Gotta go twice b'fore you can beat me, izzat it?" Jordan says, bouncing on his toes and grinning cheekily.

Her dark eyes narrow to slits as he finishes off this challenge with a loud yawn.

"Hao a," she says shortly, stepping back and gesturing curtly. "Start at yellow. Red you gotta start sliding, no later."

Over the course of this exchange Faris has managed to sidle over to stand at the back of the line next to Una.

"Tape onna floor," he comments under his breath.

He's all too keenly aware that Ma Marta and the maintenance staff are in high dudgeon lately. Thanks to Paran, Rom, and Over's latest unsolicited House improvement project, all of the common room windows have to be resealed. Stripping the floor varnish with tape is unlikely to improve their mood.

"Devon's unstick tape," Una replies, and he nods in understanding. The older boy had shown off the bizarre reusable 'unsticky' adhesive at the inHouse science fair last summer; someone must have paid through the nose to get a whole roll of the stuff off him.

"Ok ok then, ready for me?" Jordan is saying, clapping his hands and bracing his feet at the yellow line.

"Ready," says H, giving him a thumbs up.

"Better make it good," Aris grumbles.

"Oh don't wooooooorrrrry," J says, stifling another yawn. "Will do."

And at first it looks like he will. Sprinting to the red tape, he starts skidding over the polished floor, holding his arms out as though he's on a surfboard. F notices his shoulders drooping at the same time that Hunter's expression changes to one of alarm. Like a marionette with its strings cut, Jordan goes down.

The impact wakes him up as abruptly as he fell asleep, and after a brief moment of looking around in bewilderment, he looks down at his feet and shouts out, "Did I win?"

True to House custom, H rolls with it; if J's going to pretend nothing happened, so will everyone else. Immediately they all fall back, discarding their concern. He slaps down a piece of tape right where Jordan fell and as Zane is running out the measuring tape replies, "Nope, sorry. Aris mashed you."

Faris shakes his head slightly, hiding his amused smile as Jordan bemoans his low score and the girls laugh. His friend should have taken that nap after all.

On the bright side, now he has a chance to beat A's score first. He knows he can win at Risk but it can't hurt to branch out a little.

 

Chapter 33: Sparks

Notes:

CW for misogynistic language and attitudes, hitting, and questionably healthy relationships

The whole world is falling apart.

That's nothing new. Ever larger empires have collapsed, wars grown ever greater in their spheres of destruction, and there are enough nukes on the planet that it's entirely plausible that humans will annihilate themselves and the Earth along with them, a biological negative feedback system hurtling ever faster toward pointless mass suicide. Any day a supervirus could decimate the population, or the large hadron collider could suck them all into a black hole and wipe them all out in a matter of nanoseconds, or—well, so on. The point is, every second that something terrible isn't happening is only delaying the inevitable, in Devon's opinion.

Things are breaking down more visibly than usual, however—in the House, the world, wherever. Devon always steels himself for the worst so he really hates having even his most gloomy expectations surpassed. But there it is: L and Mr. W killed by Kira without even exposing the killer, the Twins splitting (ok, that was expected), Kira growing stronger month by month and now even year by year, so that the now foundationless House feels increasingly like a broken boulder in a sea of reeds, all swaying to bow to Kira's whim.

It's times like this that he thinks his hypocritical slut of a mother might actually have been right about one thing: there must be a god, after all. But a sandcastle god, who takes delight in building up the world only to smash it back into a pile of worthless sand. Mere statistics can't account for this crap.

Life as they know it is almost certainly going to end at any moment, Devon thinks one morning while staring sleeplessly at his ceiling. If he doesn't knuckle down and get certain things done soon—today, right now—he might never get a chance.

So when he's done shaving the sparse, irritating down that has started stubbling his cheeks and jaw and has filed his nails and tweezed his brows and his hair is as close to right as it's ever going to get, he slips down the hall to Crash's door and knocks until she opens it.

This ridiculous game has been going on long enough. It's about time they have a serious conversation, for once, and come to a consensus over where they stand.

"You," she groans—at least, that's what he interprets the incoherent grumble to mean. The sun's not even up yet so Devon didn't expect Crash to be awake, but of course, no one else is either, and that's the whole point. He recognizes her T-shirt as the same one she wore the day before. Probably slaved over her chemical equations long into the night, until even several shots of caffeine couldn't keep her conscious, waking sometime in the small hours of the morning just long enough to pitch headlong into bed. Most of her hair is smushed weirdly to one side, the imprint of her pillowcase wrinkles stand out red on one cheek, and her wide mouth is turned down in a wide scowl. "What. Why. What time is it? You needa borrow an 'air dryer or some girly thing?"

"Like you know what a hair dryer even look like. Oxy torches don' make the best styling tool," D shoots back. "Though that mixup explain why you always look such a disaster."

"Right-o," C mumbles, slumping against the doorway and closing her eyes and looking like she could easily doze off standing that way. "I still ugly and you still a girl. We done and I can sleep or what?"

"Sun comin' up soon. I goin' for a walk 'round the yard. Come with me."

That wakes her up.

"What, like…." she probes warily, and he nods once.

She's always so easy to read when she's caught off guard, in those fleeting moments before she grins and laughs him off. Crash isn't laughing now. D watches her face, entranced as though by a particularly gripping novel as the gears turn lightning-fast behind her bleary eyes: surprise, followed by suspicion, then horrified embarrassment as it occurs to her someone might be listening—eyes flicking down the hall first one way then the other—then something that is much more difficult to read, the guarded attention of a predator that finds itself cornered by an equal in strength.

With a jerk of her thumb over her shoulder she more or less orders him into the room, snicking the door shut behind him.

The place ought to be caution-taped. Lecturing Crash about the deadly hazards of her own room has never accomplished anything but to make her laugh, though, so he doesn't bother anymore. Every flat surface is piled precariously with glassware and pyrotechnic equipment and carefully sealed containers of toxic materials, undoubtedly "borrowed" from the chem lab. Matchbooks and coils of fuse are scattered everywhere along with clothing, dirty mugs, books, and crumpled papers, and just about everything in the room has at least one scorch mark on it. The smells of gunpowder, burnt sugar, and coffee hang cloying as incense.

Devon only has a few seconds to frown on the chaos before C is turning on him, whispering furiously.

"Suppose someone see us, eh, what then?"

"Then they see us," he retorts quietly. "Why you care?"

"What, like you don't, you the one so 'ung up on appearances! There'd be alla kinda rumors—"

"So what?" He's quite tall and has almost perfected the art of looming over those he wants to intimidate, and they're standing almost uncomfortably close—no, Devon decides, it is uncomfortable and making him a little claustrophobic—but she's not scared a bit, at least not that he might raise a hand against her. Hell, she fell off a building once just to prove to him she wasn't afraid of getting hurt…physically. Crash just glares right back up at him with her arms folded tightly and fingers twitching for a match to strike.

It's lucky for him that they met as children here as, in a place where women go unveiled, and not as adults where he grew up, because Devon is sure that if all he had to focus on was those I-dare-you eyes and the conjurings of his own imagination he'd have been wrapped hopelessly around her little finger years ago.

And it makes his insides curl with dark satisfaction and pride, thinking about how much his tasteless mother would have thoroughly despised Crash. What a delicious revenge it would have been to bring her home and introduce her as his intended and see the look on that slut's face… a well-earned payback for those years before the House but after he learned from the other boys playing in the streets what the words whore and bastard actually meant, the shame of knowing that the beautiful mother he had always been so proud of was a disgrace, looked down on by the entire neighborhood. Crash is not beautiful and never will be and will never need to be, because she's unrepentantly stubborn and brilliant and more than capable of blasting out a way for herself on sheer brains and overwhelming force of personality and perhaps a little C4.

Besides, Devon is more than beautiful enough for the both of them.

"Look," he says, "you the one always sayin' everything just games."

"Some games shouldn't be played. Maybe you needa talk to Fallon and Kae. Oh wait, you can't, cuz they gone," she snaps.

"So what. So we seen together like that, rumors go 'round, one of us decide it a bad idea and turn on each other and it all go bad and we go down in flame, at least we would have had—"

Smack!

His cheek smarts madly and Devon is not pleased in the slightest to think of the irregular red mark that might be visible later, but he's won the point, and that's worth it.

"Don't you dare, Devon," Crash hisses, looking as though she's the one who was slapped. "Don't you dare sabotage us like that—"

"Us?" D interrupts, raising his brows, and savoring the way his gut tingles warmly. "What us? Unless I miss a memo, there nothing to sabotage. Yet."

Crash glares, not replying, so he goes on, "You just scared of anything you actually give a damn about goin' wrong."

"And you scared'a anything you actually give a damn 'bout goin' right!"

She's so upset, angrier than D even dreamed he could push her to be, and his fists and jaw have clenched automatically against her dead-on accusation even though he instigated this whole thing, and for the first time he believes instead of just wishing, maybe they actually could be something. Something more than pulling pigtails and dropping ice cubes down the backs of each others' shirts and calling names and showing off and knocking each other down on the pitch. Devon knows what he wants, and he's certain now he knows what Crash wants. If she didn't care she'd be laughing in his face, not glowering at the mere suggestion that they'd fail.

"Come on," he says again. He's itching to take her hand and—he's not exactly sure, just hold it or draw her closer or even dare to kiss it—but he hasn't held someone's hand since he was five and he's certainly never kissed anyone and she's still got her arms crossed tightly over her chest anyway, and that might just be laying too many cards on the table for this preliminary stage of the game. "Hardly anyone awake. We can turn around the yard, da?"

For a brief moment, Crash looks as though she wants desperately to say yes. Then,

"Not now. Not 'ere, in the 'Ouse. Later."

"There not gonna be a later."

"Yes," Crash says fiercely, jabbing him hard in the chest with one finger. "There will be."

She's so determined that D almost thinks she might be right. He wants her to prove him wrong.

Well, he thinks a minute later, brooding in his window and watching the horizon lighten, that went a lot better than he expected, or even hoped. Side effect of always assuming the worst. Metallic, echoing bangs sound from next door, where Crash is apparently taking out her frustration on some inanimate object and hammering the ever-living hell out of it instead of going back to sleep. It's the most satisfying sound he's ever heard.

Devon lights himself a much-needed cigarette. Yeah. A lot better than he ever would have predicted.

 

Chapter 34: Hunger

L has a great deal of respect and affection for Mr. Wammy. Since the time the old inventor first took an interest in the street child who in a few bare moments offhandedly solved the entire crossword on the back of the paper he was reading, Mr. Wammy has been his caretaker and supporter, encouraging his intellectual pursuits and acting almost in the capacity of a father, though L can't recall ever having one of those.

That same mentor is the only thing that keeps him connected to the House where he lived out that dreamlike transitional period of his life, between those barely remembered years of concrete glittering with used needles and broken glass and the ever-clutching claws of cold and hunger, and what his life is now—new-scented hotel rooms and cakes and coffee and computer screens.

L prefers to keep his mind trained on his cases rather than linger over the past. And they are certainly more than a mere distraction. Nothing captivates L like a good puzzle, and it is his drive to outsmart any challenger that comes along, not something as paltry as memories of a troubled childhood, which drives him to bury himself in what others might call work, occupying every waking thought (which is almost every thought, since he rarely sleeps) with interviews and forensic evidence, times and places and dates and motives and methods. And the Kira case—well, it's the best puzzle yet.

The House is different now from what it was when he lived there. Back then it was just an orphanage. A nice one, but an orphanage nonetheless. Now it's an institution in the business of churning out hopeful and occasionally deranged replacements for him. Even when he was a child himself, L disliked other children, and now that he's physically grown (though still fairly childish), he hasn't gained any affection for them. On top of that, having to track down that clingy, sycophantic one that got away and mutilated those people in LA a couple summers ago has somewhat biased him against the House children in particular.

L would never tell Mr. Wammy, who is enamored of the idea the House, that he finds it mildly unsettling that his first name (which, admittedly, is a bit unusual, but still his name) has been recast as a title. He also finds it more than a little disturbing that children not so very many years younger than himself are striving to be the next "L," though objectively he has the ego to think it a reasonable idea. But still, though his fame has put him in something of a risky situation, should his identity ever be discovered (those who catch criminals tend to find themselves unpopular in the criminal world, after all), and admittedly his current case is quite risky, and of course people die of all sorts of things every day, still, L thinks, he's healthy and he's smart enough to be cautious. It's not as though he's about to simply fall over dead any minute now.

The House in Winchester is just an all-around unsettling and irritating place to be stuck at, from L's standpoint, especially right now, when he's itching to really get going on this unusual case. And so it's his love for Mr. Wammy and nothing else that keeps him uncharacteristically tactful when the old man suggests they check in at the House instead of heading straight for Japan.

The one consolation is that Constance is still around, and her pastry skills are as good as ever. She's sent up a heaping tray of petits fours, decorated with swirls and tiny rosettes, in a bouquet of delicious flavors. Unfortunately, even Cookie's to-die-for strawberry cake can't quite make him ignore the unwelcome visitor peeping through his cracked-open door.

He can hear the child breathing, though they're trying very hard to be quiet. It's extremely annoying. He doesn't want to speak to any of the students, but he doesn't like that they're sitting there just watching, either. It reminds him just a bit of B's half-worshipping, half-mocking attention, though he tells himself that curiosity is natural for children that age.

"I know that you are there."

Unabashed at being discovered, the student pushes the door open farther, standing boldly in the doorway. "You're L. The first one. Aren't you."

It's not a question. He answers anyway.

"And you are Mello."

L can see that, now, in the light of the hallway, the golden-blond hair in its distinctive page-boy cut. This was one of the two that stuck out to him, that hung back at the edge of the webcam's focus and observed the interview much as a pair of wolves might observe the movement of a flock of sheep from the treeline, waiting for an opportunity to pick off a straggler.

Reading emotions is not exactly one of his strong suits, but judging on how the boy straightens a little, leaning a little from the light of the hallway and into the darkness of L's almost completely unfurnished room, he seems emboldened, even a little awed that L knows his name. Crouched on the floor behind his computer, L debates whether his obligation to Watari quite extends to not telling this child to go away so he can work on his case, which is much more interesting than him.

"You must be busy," Mello says, sounding quite as though he's hoping for an invitation into the room.

"Yes. Very," L replies shortly.

The boy's voice is definitely a little awed now, hushed and eager. "With the Kira case."

"That is correct."

"I've been following it too," Mello blurts, when L turns dismissively back to his computer.

L looks up sharply at that. This is his case, his puzzle. Mello seems to sense his annoyance immediately, though, and draws back slightly. "You know. Watching on the news. People are saying some pretty crazy things. You're going to catch him soon though, aren't you."

"I expect my investigation will bring the killer to light soon, yes."

What with the low camera resolution during the long-distance interview, it was difficult for L to put a finger on what exactly it was about Mello and Near that both repelled and impressed him. Now, in person, it is clear just what that burning expression is.

Hunger.

He can see it in the way those intense blue eyes follow his hand to the platter of cakes and back, the way Mello simultaneously hangs back self-consciously, but stares as though he couldn't tear his gaze away if he tried. L finds himself making the same mental analogy again of a half-starved wolf staring at a fat sheep through a fence. Like Beyond, and yet not—B hid his hunger for power beneath layer upon cloying layer of sniveling and pretense and sugar-coated poison. L gets the distinct impression that M would be hard-pressed to ever hide his true thoughts and emotions.

Still, the LA case was not so very long ago, and though he'd far rather be puzzling over Kira and his methods, if he can act now to head off potential problems in the future….

"What is it, L?" Mello asks brazenly, and L's mind is made up. Perhaps a little cautionary tale is in order.

"You remind me of a former student here," the investigator says, plucking up another strawberry petit four then pausing. "Would you like a cake?"

The struggle is clear on Mello's thin face as he attempts to weigh the situation—questioning what L might mean with that loaded statement (it certainly doesn't come across as positive, given the assorted fates of all of the House students who could be described as 'former'), and what the correct answer to his question might be—if there even is a correct answer. "No, thank you."

Good, more for him. "Fine then. Close the door," says L. Popping the cake into his mouth he continues indistinctly, "Sit down. Over there." He gestures to the far corner.

Hesitating for an instant, the boy does so, his gaze growing wary.

"I am going to tell you about a case I investigated recently," the young man informs him. "Then I want you to go away. Do you understand?"

Those blazing blue eyes widen in the dark. "Yes, sir."

"Good." He chooses another cake, picking off the spun-sugar rose on top and crunching on it. Delicious. "When I first received reports of the serial killings, they were referred to by the media as the Wara Ningyo murders…."

Chapter 35: Toad

Summary:

CW for implied gore

An instant after Nina sleepily reaches for her favorite stuffed animal and discovers what Paolo has done to Mr. Frogface, her hysterical shriek shatters the relative peace of the early Sunday morning.

"MARTAAAA!"

Minutes later, having deposited a thoroughly traumatized Nina into an aide's soothing arms and hauled Paolo to her office, the matron drops the toy to her desk in front of him with a sickening squelch and demands in a voice that calls to mind the restrained creaking of a dam that is just at its breaking point, "And just vat is zis?"

"Eh…eheh…a frog?" the little boy offers up along with a sheepish gap-toothed smile.

"Vhy did you do zis?"

"Eh well you know…issa frog, yeah? And frogs got insides. I made it better."

To be honest, Paolo is not entirely certain what the problem is. It's pretty clear that the matron is infuriated, but why? He figures the reason that Nina has so many toy animals is because she wants a real one. She says things that aren't very nice sometimes but she always apologizes after and last week she helped him with his English homework so he thought he should do something nice for her too.

It must be that the insides he got from the bio lab weren't really frog insides. Mr. Frogface is much bigger than most frogs, so he ended up deciding to sacrifice genetic realism for proportional realism and used the insides of a largish raccoon that the intermediate biology class was supposed to dissect later that week.

"I'm sorry 'bout the raccoon," he says, downcast. "But the frogs were little."

She graces him with a long, barely-restrained lecture about respecting the belongings of others, and he is given to know that Nina does not see his alteration of her favorite toy as anything remotely approaching an improvement—sees it as hopelessly ruined, even. This terrible revelation weighs far more heavily on him than Marta's sentence of two weeks on pot-scrubbing and garden-weeding duty.

His attitude changes somewhat that evening, when instead of getting his homework over with or playing video games with Solar or Train he finds himself half-soaked in hot soapy water, washing off what must be every spoon the House has ever owned. They had treacle tart today, so the silverware is especially sticky and stubborn. Nina yelled at him, calling him a perverted little toad and not seeming sorry at all, as she usually is when she accidentally blurts out things she doesn't mean to say out loud, and hasn't talked to or looked at him since. In fact, hardly anyone has talked to him today.

The few encounters he has had were all uncomfortable and unpleasant. First the confrontation with Karter and Lazlo and Geia, who cornered him as he was coming out of the bathroom and made oblique threats to the effect that they'll sabotage every lab he ever does for the rest of his life if he so much as looks at their friend again. Then Qarri with more of the same—she doesn't even hang out with Nina, she just sticks up for her because with her uncontrollable, unfiltered truth-telling, N is pretty much the Anti-Isabel. Probably worst was Rom and Over joining him at lunch and crowing over what a fantastic prank he pulled. They've never liked Nina much, not since she commented that far from being the next L, their friend Paran would probably be the next L's first easy case. He doesn't want the approval of people like that, and he thought he saw Geia shoot him a nasty look when they were clapping him on the back in congratulations.

Nina ought to have liked it, he thinks resentfully as Constance picks through the forks and spoons he's been drying and tosses half of them back in the sink on the grounds that they still have treacle on them. It was a lot of work, getting all the parts out of the raccoon without destroying them, then arranging them all just right, and sewing her stupid toy closed again! He's never sewn before, he pricked his fingers a dozen times doing that! And it was better, she just didn't get it. For whatever reason. Stupid Nina and her stupid friends. Just because they're older—just who do they think they are, talking down on him like that? He's so tired of being so close to the end of the alphabet, and the second alphabet at that. The Warden needs to get in and find more fishies so he doesn't have to be one of the littlest anymore. When Mr. W was alive—

Well, he's not. So there's no point in going there.

Paolo sighs, dropping his elbows onto the edge of the sink (he has to stand on a stool to reach) and pokes at the bubbles morosely. Maybe if he unfixes Mr. Frogface Nina will admit that she's sorry for what she said, and start talking to him again, and tell her mean friends to leave him alone. But they'll be keeping a double sharp eye on him now, Paolo doubts he'd be able to get his hands on the toy. Which has probably been thrown away by now anyway.

One of Cookie's assistants eventually takes pity on him and helps him dry the last of the forks, finally setting him free from punishment for the night. Sort of. Now he's got a pile of English homework to do, and only a couple hours until curfew, and no Nina to help him.

Usually he likes to do his studying in the common room, where there's often something going on and people hanging around, but that's also where Karter and Lazlo will be this time of the evening, and he doesn't dare.

And Solar is no help at all tonight. He knocks at her door for several minutes with no answer, before going to check his Housemail and discovering she sent him a message earlier saying she was going to be working on her latest story, which means she's probably holed up in the attic or a tree or some other weird place like that with her little green notebook and will stay there until she falls asleep and is found by an aide.

There are too many distractions in his room, too many books and magazines and posters, ranging from prints of the Vesalius woodcuts to a collection of National Geographic posters of things like two-headed lizards and giant tarantulas. Too many things to look at that are not remotely related to but are much more interesting than his English homework.

Between Nina and her friends and Mr. Frogface and Mr. W and Solar and dishes and English homework he's managed by this point to work himself down into a pretty sorry state. He's so depressed he doesn't even notice Kendall shuffling down the hall in her dinosaur slippers until he runs right into her.

"Whoah there, kiddo," the plump old lady laughs, catching him, then steadying him back on his feet. "And where are you headed off to with that big ol' frown?"

"The libr'y," P says miserably, hugging his book to his chest and looking down at her slippers. They usually make him smile, with their buggy yellow eyes and big fuzzy teeth, but right now they're just reminding him of Mr. Frogface.

It doesn't take a genius to figure out that he's not doing so great, and Kendall didn't come to be the reference librarian at the House for sitting around looking pretty. She's been up since five in the morning and it's been a long day; she recognizes the textbook Paolo is carrying as the one used a particularly tough professor who just assigned an extremely difficult research paper that many of the kids have been struggling with. That's why she's here and not in bed right now; Kendall was supposed to have some time off to rest a few hours ago, but she was helping first Ochre then Faris and then Matt troll through various archives and repositories looking for sources. Paolo has little to no patience for academic reading, she knows; the kid is going to end up in tears within fifteen minutes of trying to get it done on his own. And when she left just now, Addison was chin-deep in practice questions trying to help Sember get ready for his tests to start applying to medical schools.

Plus, she's heard all about the Mr. Frogface fiasco from several of the students now, and though she'll be the first to admit Paolo is a peculiar little duckling…well, they all have their favorites, even though they're supposed to treat the children equally. Roger blatantly pulls strings for Mello and Near, Addison moped for weeks when Hopper and Dex graduated and left him with no one to debate politics with, and Hopkins has yet to ever give Paran the infamous stink-eye despite how many times that scamp has damaged House property. Kendall has a bit of a soft spot for this scrawny oddball, who reminds her rather of herself when she was his age. She felt badly about Nina's toy, but she still couldn't help but chuckle a little when she heard the story.

"I was just on my way back," she lies cheerfully, scooping his little hand into her ring-bedecked one. "Working on Professor Dylerman's paper?"

Paolo nods unhappily, trotting along beside her as she waddles right on back to the library.

"You know, if you haven't picked a topic book yet, there's one I think you would like," Kendall tells P, grinning down at him confidentially. "It's about a scientist called Dr. Moreau, and his experiments in vivisection."

"A scientist?" he asks a little dazedly, momentarily distracted from stuffed animals and angry students.

Notes:

The book Kendall is referring to is The Island of Dr. Moreau, by H. G. Wells.

The Vesalius woodcuts also not of my own invention-they're some of the earliest anatomically correct medical illustrations, from the book De humani corporis fabrica, and are creepy as hell

Chapter 36: Ears

"This gonna be great," Rom whispers eagerly, propping himself up on his elbows and addressing Over across Paran's back.

"Way better than the vents," Over agrees.

Their soft voices are barely louder than the faint, tinny sound of the headphones hanging round O's neck, but they're already driving P crazy. Gritting his teeth, he shifts his grip on the wrench and tries to get a better angle on the pipe he's adjusting. Two years ago they all fit fine, but now Paran is almost fourteen and Rom and Over are just two years younger, and the cupboard under the old unused utility room sink has gotten a bit small for the three of them to stick their heads and shoulders in comfortably.

He'd like to tell them to move their fat heads and let him work, but Over is his acoustics expert and Rom is a wizard with bugs and electronics, and they're all three (supposedly) equals in this venture. Much as they irritate the hell of him, they're also somehow his two best friends (and minions, though they probably don't see it quite that way), and he needs their expertise to set these bugs properly.

"Ja, and nobody ever gonna suspect we try this one again," R is saying.

"No more floodin' gardens," O agrees, and at that cue, they say together in a pretty decent mimicry of Constance's voice, "Whaddya mean, 'the taters are rotted'?" then fall into fits of helpless, silent giggles.

"Can it 'fore somebody hear us," Paran hisses irritably.

He hates when they talk in unison almost as much as he hates being reminded of the infamous incident where they ended up attempting to plant bugs in pipes that, unbeknownst to them, were indeed still in use. Well, they were younger then, and now they know better. Still, it's a standing joke that P always gets caught breaking the brass rules, and though it's not true, he sure seems to get stuck washing dishes a lot more often than anyone else; certainly nobody ever lets him forget those occasions on which he's messed up big time.

"Yep, yep," Over says easily.

"Don' wanna getcha stuck inna kitchen again," says Rom.

Paran scowls. With a forceful jerk of his shoulder and a protesting screech of rusted metal, the pipe seal finally gives way. Making sure he's not actually under the pipe (he's had all kinds of nasty stuff drip on him out of supposedly 'unused' pipes before), P jiggles the U-bend until it scrapes free.

"Yeah!" R and O cheer quietly.

Setting the bug is the easy part. Half of their work was done days ago, making the bugs and choosing the pipes with the best placement and easiest access. Once this last mic is set, they can start adjusting the receivers and recorders to filter out the unwanted echoes and overlapping voices. It takes just seconds for Over to nudge a wad of Devon's 'stick4ever' putty into the pipe and for Rom to carefully work the bug into it.

"Ok then," the younger boys chorus once they're satisfied, and Paran rolls back over to close up the pipes again.

A bit of grime from the floor of the cabinet hides the shiny silver scratches left by the wrench, some dabbing with a dirty towel gets rid of any handprints. Their now filthy jumpers get crammed into Rom's backpack—they'll go play around outside a bit later in them to account for the dirt. Then Rom and Over go one way, because whenever they're apart it's a little bit suspicious, and Paran goes the other, because if he's seen with them coming out of the sub-basement it'll definitely alert kids who are paying attention that they've been up to something. Everyone remembers the flooding incident, and a few figured out that the story they cooked up for Marta about making improvements to the plumbing system was a load of hooey.

They meet back up in O's room, where he finds them already hunched over the receivers, turning knobs and dials and fiddling with the antenna. Over's face is a little broader, and Rom's hair is a little curlier, but the two of them could easily be brothers. They even sound something alike, as O mumbles tunelessly along with his music and R mutters to himself in Russian.

"'E's here!" Rom yells at Over when Paran walks in, punching his arm to get his attention. Peeling his oversized headphones away from one ear, O looks back at Paran, both of them regarding him with twin expressions of grim disappointment.

"What?" he demands. "What wrong? No signal?"

His stomach plummets. They've spent weeks developing those stupid bugs and figuring out their perfect placement—this is a setback of days at least, maybe even more weeks, and the new class session is starting next week. They're not going to have nearly as much time to work on this.

Dammit, why does everything he attempts go wrong?

But though R manages to shake his head, the corners of his mouth twitching, Over can't hold back his snigger.

"You little nose-pickers," P snaps bad-temperedly, kicking some cords out of his way, and the other two boys start rolling with laughter.

"Works like charms!" Rom crows, and Over chimes in, "Not hardly any static, either, just echoes."

"An' you can't just say so, gotta prank some stupid joke outtuvit," Paran grumbles, dropping down to sit next to his 'friends'.

"Lighten up, P," the other two reply, rolling their eyes.

"It just a tiny bitty prank. Hardly even count," Rom continues, waving a careless hand.

Paran scowls. "Whatever. Lemme hear that 'ceiver."

They're right. The reception is excellent. Already he can hear the faint overlapping echoes of two different conversations from the teachers' offices two floors above the sub-basement utility sink. A bit of filtering, a bit of sound adjustment, and they'll be in business.

It's all great, but Paran can't help but be a little cross that those things that actually work out in his favor are the ones he can't brag to everyone about.

Chapter 37: Time's Up

Tick…tick…tick…

…

Automatically Karter lifts his wrist to check his suddenly silent watches.

His wrist is bare.

Panic rushes down on him, and he staves it off with an effort. It's ok. Everything is ok. If he doesn't have Father and Halstein's watches, it must be because they're still alive, still wearing them. Right? He's pretty sure.

But they said they'd be home by five o'clock and it's ten minutes after, then the phone starts ringing, ringing, with news he's too young to hear. He already knows what the man on the other end of the line is going to tell him….

With a muffled shout, K wakes, thrashing in his tangled sheets.

Just a dream. It was just a dream.

Not that waking is an improvement, because his father and brother are still dead. But at least the warm clasp of the three watches is still there, the one analog timepiece ticking like a tiny heartbeat against his own pulse.

Pressing his hands to his forehead, Karter struggles to even out his breathing. He's parched. He needs a glass of water. The plastic cup on his bedside table is empty.

After refilling it in the bathroom sink, he splashes some cold water on his face, swiping back the wild curls that stick to his face. His bright blue eyes look just like Halstein's; he knows because he remembers a little old lady at church telling them so, a lifetime ago. For a moment he tries to hold his own gaze but he can't do it for long.

According to schedule, Karter usually sleeps until 7:00 am sharp. He doesn't feel much like sleeping, though, and what does it matter? The memorial is tomorrow, so everything will be all wrong and at different times anyway. Carrying his water with him, he wanders down to the foyer. Tonight, he thinks he can get away with it. Tonight the aides are busy with kids who are in a lot worse shape than he is.

He likes mornings—literally, the time from 12:00 am til 11:59 am, before the military watch moves on to 13, 14, 15 and the other digital watch rolls back to 1, 2, 3. During those twelve hours his watch and Halstein's are perfectly synced, with Father's watch counting the march of the seconds out loud. Watching the numbers change simultaneously calms him. Inside and out, all three watches are different—from Father's heavy old gold-and-lacquer antique, to Halstein's professional steel-and-gadget army issue watch, to Karter's watch, a plastic piece of crap that he saved his allowance to buy from the convenience store while still in foster care. It's a miracle that it's lasted this long. But they all count time the same.

Karter wonders what happened to Mr. W's watch. It was a pretty one, silver-plated with a mother-of-pearl face. Of course, nobody, including Mr. W, would ever have considered for a second to give it to K. He has no right. Still, he feels like he'd feel a little better if he knew where it was.

Their benefactor's body is on the other side of the world right now, though, and the closest he has are these paintings in the entryway.

K likes Linda's the best, though he would never tell that bossy loudmouth so. It's the only one with the watch clearly there.

One of them is actually Karter's, though technically he can't say it's a portrait. Art is not exactly a talent of his. A couple summers ago during the week-long Broaden Your Horizons seminar series, he'd been stuck with either braiding lanyards, Tagolog for beginners, or painting. K figured learning English was bad enough, he wasn't about to take on some obscure dialect that he'd probably never use again, and what the heck was he going to do with a lanyard? So he'd splashed some paint around into a vague gooey blob with orange tentacles, and when the teacher dubiously asked him what it was he jokingly replied in a hurt-child voice that it was Mr. W, obviously.

He and Nina and Lazlo thought it was hilarious when they actually put it up on the Wammy wall with the others, N commenting that next to Aris's blue-octopus version of the man it didn't really look so out of place. Now he wishes that he hadn't said that, or that he actually had tried to do a real picture.

"I can't believe they didn't even tell us for a week," comes a voice from the stairs, making Karter almost jump out of his skin. A glance at his watches shows he's been staring at the paintings for nearly twenty minutes, unaware of his surroundings.

With a humorless huff of a laugh, Aris unfolds herself from her seat on the bottom step, padding almost silently across the foyer to stand a few yards away, examining the only photo print on the wall, taken by Quinn right before Mr. W and L left for Japan.

"Just cuz none of us gonna be successors," the girl goes on bitterly. "Jeez, Warden. Let the Twins have their stupid L. He fail anyway. But Mr. W belong to all of us."

It's not the first time since they were briefed on L and Mr. W's deaths that he's heard this sentiment. Of course, many of them knew what had happened before the brass finally told them, thanks to the overlapping network jumble of wiretaps and bugs in the place. In any case, though, a lot of fights have been breaking out between distraught kids, some of whom now resent L, some of whom staunchly defend him. Nina even blurted out that it was L's fault Mr. W had died, and Lazlo hadn't reasoned with her like he often does when she goes too far, just shrugged dispassionately and went through half a pack of cigarettes in what Karter figured had to be some sort of record time.

Should he be angry? He was at first, but K has never been able to stay mad for long. Usually he replaces his anger with laughing at something funny about the situation, and it makes everything a little better.

There's not much that's funny about this, though.

The Kira jokes started to fall flat over a year ago, when it became clear that the killer was going to be around and killing for a good long while and the death toll continued to mount. And now, the future of the House itself is in question. It's taken the brass a week just to tell them L and Mr. W are dead; how long might it take before they tell them what's going to become of them? Karter's not really sure how these things work. Does the House still have money without Mr. W? Will the House stay as is, or will they all be scattered, sent away to other facilities?

Even the succession isn't a joke now. It has always had a sort of satiric irony about it, the whole song and dance of pretending they might succeed L, when clearly that was a place reserved for Mello and Near. A month ago he would have found it hysterical that Mello would walk away like this, leaving Near to deal with the mess by himself.

Actually he did think it was kind of funny until yesterday morning, when he caught a glimpse of Near sitting with his back to the wall in a little-used hallway, balancing an unsteady tower of markers. It had collapsed after only eight tiers, and the frustration had been clear on the older boy's face. K had almost, almost laughed, until it occurred to him that that was L now. That was the new champion of the House, possibly the only person who could stop Kira before that crazy nutter decimated the population. Karter had found himself wondering:

What if Near failed too?

Near had looked rather as though he were wondering the exact same thing. Suddenly it wasn't so funny anymore, and K had hurried on his way without saying anything.

He's not angry anymore, or trying to laugh it off. He's just…sad.

"You unusually quiet," Aris comments, snapping him back to the present. "Awake in there?"

"Yeah, guess so."

"What, no stupid jokes?"

Karter forces a smile. "I let you know if I think of one."

"Hnn. You a lot less annoying this time'a day." A seems to consider this a green light to continue venting. "This just all so wrong. Kira better be born a slug next time round. A half of a slug, that get eaten by a bird almost immediately, then puked out in a volcano! If anyone shoulda died it shoulda be him. Mr. W never do anything wrong, never hurt anyone! It just not fair," she concludes, seeming suddenly worn out by her own tirade.

According to his watches, it's almost five in the morning. Sighing, he drops his arm to his side and traces the face of his father's watch with one finger. "Everybody time run out eventually."

Chapter 38: Shoes

Another morning, another breakfast, another day of topsy-turvy carnival pandemonium.

When Moira first came to live and work as an aide at the House, she didn't think she'd ever acclimate to the noise or the kids' heartbreaking problems and ingenious pranks. After one chaotic week, she came this close to saying forget it, maybe it wasn't so awful being on her own. Sure, her psychotic abusive stalker ex-boyfriend was still out there somewhere, and he'd found her everywhere else she tried to hide, and would probably try to kill her again if he caught up with her. But she could just try harder. The fake identity that Mr. W set up for her would tide her over for a while at least. She's smart enough that she could probably learn Chinese in two months. She'd go live in some remote mountain village. Farming couldn't be that bad, could it? True, she didn't get a Master's degree in child psychology just so she could hoe cabbages, but she didn't exactly plan on using it to corral wild geniuses either.

She'd been convinced to stay, though, and it's actually a pretty good deal. She can still do research, she actually learns a lot more from her fellow aides and from the kids themselves than she thought she would, and now simultaneously filling Una's cup with milk and prying the butter dish away from Paran so that Qarri can butter her toast and telling Rom and Over that she's going to make sure they eat all of the sausage pieces they're throwing at each other even if they do fall on the floor is simply second nature. It's also second nature that in the midst of this scene of confusion, she notices there's a head missing from its usual place at the table she's monitoring.

"Where's Vince?" Moira asks the table as she puts the lid back on the milk. "Here you go, Qarri. Una, what do we say?"

"T'ank oo," Una whispers, mortified at being directly addressed and hunching behind her milk glass.

"Thanks, Moira," says Q loudly, throwing a dirty look at Paran as she accepts the butter dish, and he sticks his tongue out at her. "Dunno, haven't seen Mr. Sunshine today yet."

"Maybe he fell inna pond," Over suggests, even more loudly.

"Maybe the pond monsta eated him!" Rom agrees enthusiastically.

"Don't be stupid, there no monster in the pond. That just a blakabaka story Gao make up to scare little kids," Qarri says scornfully.

"Maybe pond monsta gonna eat you next for sayin' he not real!" Rom lunges at her with a large toothy grin and a roar.

"Moira, make him stop being dumb!"

"There's no need for name-calling, Qarri. Rom, why don't you chew on your food instead of Q's arm," Moira says patiently, pulling Rom upright and putting his fork in his hand. "Paran, did Vince get up this morning?"

P shrugs sullenly. "Dunno."

"Well I'll go check then. Jeremy! Can you watch my table for a second?"

"Mello, if you don't stop poking Near I'm going to have Linda come sit between you two. What's that, Moira?" The aide at the next table over turns, looking a little harried.

"What? That's not fair!" Linda wails, as Moira repeats, "Can you take my table for a sec? I'm gonna go check on V."

"I saw that, Near. You behave too. Uh, sure, but come back soon, 'k?"

"You guys show Jeremy's table how good a Wammy kid can be at breakfast, alrighty?" Moira tells her group. She can't help but smile a little at how effective the challenge is; glancing back over her shoulder on her way across the room she sees even Rom and Over are sitting nicely in their places and eating (albeit with their hands and not their silverware), throwing looks of smug superiority at the other table where Mello and Near are still jostling each other. After letting Marta know where she's headed, Moira slips out of the dining hall and heads for the dormitories.

The rest of the House is sleepily quiet, in stark contrast to the chatter and sausage-scented craziness concentrated in the dining hall. Coming up to Vince's bedroom door, Moira finds it shut, but she can clearly hear him singing to himself.

"Vince?" she calls, knocking.

"C'min!" answers his cheerful little voice.

Moira has to bite the inside her mouth to keep from bursting into laughter at the sight that meets her eyes when she opens the door.

V is sitting in the middle of the floor, his pajama legs rolled up to the knees. Right beside him is a brand-new sneaker, gotten just yesterday. The other is on his foot, the laces wrapped up around his ankle and tied into a tangled wad that would rival the Gordian knot.

"It's time for breakfast," she tells him, still struggling not to laugh at him. "You don't want to miss it, do you?"

"No," says V, beaming at her and bending back over the knot, which he is currently trying to loosen with a pen cap. "I gonna wear my new shoes to brea'fast! But I din' know the bows so I maked my own knot. I invented it," he tells her proudly. "But now I gotta un-invent it a little bit."

"I can see that," Moira says, returning his brilliant smile helplessly. "Here, why don't you teach me and we can both work on it."

"Well, ok then."

"You know, Vince, you don't need to wear shoes to breakfast. Marta might get a little bit upset about shoes on her floor," Moira points out gently as Vince sits back and lets her attempt to subdue the monstrous shoelace knot.

"Ma Marta don' like dirts onna floor," the little boy points out brightly. "New shoes don't got any dirts."

"That's true," Moira admits. His eager attitude is infectious, and she remembers how excited he was yesterday during try-on time. Most of the kids get cranky during new-clothes days; they don't like any of the colors, they're tired of trying things on, they'd rather keep their old favorite pajamas even though they have a hole in them, the shirt they like doesn't fit but they try to pretend it does, they have homework and don't want to be distracted just to try on t-shirts. Vince, on the other hand, lit up like a little light bulb when he saw the white shoes with the green stripes on the sides, strutting around proudly in them with his normally happy grin stretched so wide Moira thought his face might break in half. "Tell you what. Just for today we'll ask Marta if you can let everyone see your awesome new shoes. Ok? Then after that you can keep them nice just for outside Play Time. Hao ba?"

"Hao a!" Vince agrees excitedly, waggling his feet.

Right. Now she just has to get this thing untied. Moira hopes everything is going ok at the table for Jeremy, because this might take a few minutes.

Chapter 39: Sighting

He always looks sad, the mirror-boy, and he's fast, because whenever Quinn sees him out of the corner of her eye and tries to snap a picture, he's gone before she can get her camera focused. Not that that keeps her from trying when she sees him.

It's not often that it happens, though, and little Q learned even before Mr. W found her and brought her here that other people's eyes don't work very well. For a while Beckon was an exception; and he was hesitant to admit it to her when Quinn saw the boy in the yard one evening and ran to him, the closest person she saw.

"Beck, there was a stranger!" she'd whispered to the older boy, afraid and excited; strangers weren't allowed at Wammy's, and another thing that she learned about people before Mr. W were that strangers could be mean and bad and horrible even if they didn't look it, but he had looked so sad and afraid himself that she was mostly curious. Before she could save her sighting with the camera, though, he'd vanished.

"What? A stranger? At Wammy's? An unLettered one?" he'd looked around quickly, and Quinn had wanted to take a picture of him, because Beckon always had rainbows in his head and she almost imagined they were swirling when he moved like that.

"I dunno. He just a kid. A big kid. Like you."

"What he look like?"

"White with dark hair," she'd said, "and he was really sad."

"Oh," Beck had said, "him," in a voice that made it clear he knew who she was talking about.

"You saw him too?"

"No, I—not just now. Once. But he doesn't have any colors. I don't…I don't think you should tell anyone about him, Q. I don't think he real."

And that had been the last Beckon would say about the mirror-boy. And then a few months later, Beck was gone.

Quinn hasn't asked anybody else about the boy since then, nor about a whole list of other things; she's started having to draw a little picture list of them for herself to remember which things are things that everybody looks at, and which show themselves for her eyes only. Some of the subtle things she can show other people with her camera, and they call it "art", which is funny. But most are best kept private. Outside when she shared her sightings her aunt and uncle thought she was hallucinating, and took her to a bad old man who said she had to take yucky medicine that didn't do anything. It's safer this way.

So Quinn remembers not to shout when she sees that Mello's face is on fire, and she doesn't talk to the young man who sits next to Karter at meals sometimes and looks just like him, and she doesn't ask anyone else if they see the mirror-boy.

Of course, that doesn't mean she doesn't try to hunt him down every time she does sight him.

"Gotcha!" Q whispers triumphantly to herself. Click!

Seizing the Polaroid eagerly, her shoulders promptly slump in disappointment. The doorway of the common room is empty; the mirror-boy has gotten away again.

"Oh no you don't, not this time," she mutters, and clatters down the stairs, camera aimed like a weapon. She bursts in, ready to shoot.

But the mirror-boy is long gone, of course. The common room is still and empty except for Icarus, who looks up briefly from where she's curled up in the windowseat then returns her gaze to the article she's reading, uninterested in the adventures of a child.

The much older girl is practically as much of a ghost as the mirror-boy, silently drifting about the place like a cloud of mist. The first few days Quinn came to the House she couldn't stop staring whenever she saw her, unable to determine which face was real—the pretty, unmarred one, or the one with the scarred and mangled lips. They switched and overlapped depending on how Q tilted her head like an optical illusion. A quick, sneaky snapshot had settled the issue, ending her interest.

Quinn decides to ignore Icarus and pouts to herself. Stupid mirror-boy! What's he so scared of, anyway? Sulking, she kicks her way around the room for a bit, examining the books and games and puzzles stacked up along the walls.

This is plenty to distract her, not that it takes much. Some of the games are old, buried at the bottom and with faded boxes and whose rules she doesn't know, and some are recognizable favorites in the House, with boxes that have been taped and repaired several times. She likes the fossil-layer color stripes of them, so she raises her camera to snap a quick photo.

There he is!

Quinn whirls around, trying to catch the phantom at the edge of her vision and clicking a picture of blurred nothing.

The mirror-boy is gone again, but now Icarus is staring at her, slanted eyes narrowing in suspicion. Sitting up a little, the young woman beckons to Q, who curiously goes to her. She's probably just going to tell her to stop being annoying and go away, but that's more than they've ever talked before, and maybe it could be interesting.

Quinn doesn't know any sign language. She peers down as Icarus flips over the PDF she's reading and writes on the blank back side,

You just saw someone, didn't you?

Mouth dropping open, Q blurts loudly in surprise, "You saw him too?"

Scowling, Icarus brings a single finger sharply to her mouth. Then she shakes her head, tapping one ear.

"You can hear him?" Quinn says eagerly, but much more quietly. The older girl nods, then returns pencil to paper.

Don't worry, he doesn't want to hurt anyone. Stop chasing him.

"You know who he is, don't you?" she whispers excitedly, but the other girl frowns, clearly annoyed by her curiosity.

"Come on, just tell me who he is," Quinn wheedles. "Why does he always look so sad?"

At that, Icarus's face grows sadder, and she writes reluctantly, He used to live here. He was

Quinn looks up as the older girl stops writing, impatient. "He was what? He not here no more, ma ne? Does he belong to someone here, like Karter's mirror-friend?"

She shakes her head, clearly struggling over how much to tell Q, and Quinn wants to shake her and yell to just tell her everything, but Icarus might decide not to tell her a single thing if she does. Finally she scribbles out was and finishes the sentence, He died.

It all clicks into place and she gasps. "Died here? It A, innit? Like in the ghost stories the bigger kids tell—about Alt and Ba-"

A curt, furious gesture from Icarus cuts her off. They're not stories and they shouldn't talk about it, she writes, scribbling so quickly in her anger that it's barely legible. Leave him alone. If you can sense him then you're vulnerable here. E and Beck couldn't stand it anymore and now they're gone. If you don't want to get scrubbed too you'll ignore him and not tell anybody. Just forget all about it.

And all the petulant nagging and pleading Quinn can muster won't drag another word from Icarus, except a dire threat to hack her computer and destroy her system if she ever brings it up again.

Chapter 40: Miscarriage

Notes:

CW for mentions of accidental self-harm.

"Geoffrey, why don't you go out and get some potatoes for tomorrow," Constance orders when she sees Dr. Torres in the kitchen doorway, shooing her assistants out the garden door with a no-nonsense snap of her dish towel. "Sandry, Merrit, give him a hand. I can finish up prep."

"But-we're in the middle of-"

"Yes, three baskets of potatoes shall do us famously," Constances says loudly, overriding them. There's never really much to be gained by arguing.

Waving the younger woman in, the old chef puts the kettle on. "Tea?"

"Please. Thank you," says the psychologist, sitting down stiffly at the kitchen table. Tension draws tightly at her shoulders and the corners of her mouth, making her look much older than she is.

Constance gives her time to settle a little, marching around the kitchen and getting teacups, biscuits, scones, crumpets, far more food than she knows the slender Spanish woman could possibly eat, but she's always been of the opinion that good, hearty food comforts hurting hearts as effectively as it fills empty stomachs. Pouring a cup of raspberry tea and dosing it liberally with honey, she hands it to the other woman and sits her creaking frame down across the table from her.

"I've just been speaking with the headmaster," Torres says in a voice of forced calm.

"About Yuan?"

"Yes." She purses her lips tightly, staring down at her teacup.

Constance sighs, raking thick fingers through her short, greying hair. "How is the lad?"

"Asleep, last I consulted Verity. She expects he will make a full physical recovery." With a sudden sharp sigh, she presses her manicured hands to her forehead. "Dr. Foeler identified the injected substance as some sort of cocktail of plant DNA and protein synthesis catalysts."

"Was it…."

"Not lethal, no. I don't believe it was a suicide attempt," Dr. Torres says, then lets out a short, humorless laugh. "I suspect…he was attempting to effect a metamorphosis of some kind. Turn himself into a plant hybrid. Clearly unsupported by everything Professor Foeler had already told him several times, as well as his own work and research. Clearly a result of delusion, and not…well. He wants to be a tree. Not much else to say."

"Has he been told yet?" Constance asks gently.

"No," she says, closing her eyes. "Not yet. He's not quite stable. I didn't want to…I couldn't…God."

Instinct prompts Constance to move, sitting beside the young psychologist and putting a comforting arm around her. Within moments the doctor is sobbing into her shoulder.

"They're dropping like flies. Beckon, Fallon, Mello, Xie, and now Yuan…and half a dozen more who are just this close to the edge. God, what am I doing wrong?"

"Hush now, lass," the old woman tells her. "For every one that we can't help, there are several more that thrive. You're handling a lot of extraordinary cases at the same time. Not just any doc could do a fraction as well as you've already done. You're not a magician."

"But for every one…they take it so hard," she cries, voice muffled. "It's like they've been exiled to the worst imaginable…. They think it's their own fault, like they've been too bad for me to fix…I'm just giving up on them."

"You're not giving up on 'em. You're making a difficult decision for their own benefit," Constance contradicts her firmly, patting her back. All of her children were boys. She finds herself wondering momentarily what it would have been like to have a daughter, and shoves the thought away before it digs too deep.

After a while Torres draws away. "Thanks, Constance," she says, not sounding at all like she really believes her. Propping up an elbow on the table, she picks a chocolate biscuit off the tray. "You know what they call it?" she asks moodily, staring into space. "Scrubbing. As though they're dirt we have to clean out of the place."

"I'm sure that's not what they—"

"I'm sure it is," Torres says, taking a huge bite of the biscuit. "This is really good," she mumbles, another stray tear slipping down her cheek.

Constance smiles sadly. "Yuan can be quite endearing," she points out. "And he's not so very old. He has a relatively good chance for adoption."

"You needn't coddle me, Connie," Torres sighs, combing back a few dark strands that have escaped her strict bun and choosing another biscuit disconsolately. "Many of them—well, they claim anyway—don't even want to be adopted…. This is such a rarefied social climate. We let them become acclimated to certain attitudes toward—toward their gifts, and their behaviors, and then to send them back to a society that will never understand them…." Another chocolate cookie disappears. "Sometimes I think we are doing as much harm in removing them from Wammy's as we would be if we didn't transfer them to a psychiatric facility. It's a stressful program, but…it's still their home."

The proper and official reply would be that the House is an institution with an agenda, and that decisions must be made on the basis of forwarding that agenda and not in sympathy to every individual case that comes along. Whatever the legal papers say, it's not an orphanage, and they can't function as one.

Instead she says nothing, because anything she says will be either criticizing Mr. W or will just make Torres feel worse, and takes a biscuit from the tray as well.

Chapter 41: Heist

Hunter always coils his socks together in their pairs, packing the resulting rolls into the smallest possible space. So when one left sock is removed from its roll and its partner left lying loose in the drawer, he notices almost immediately. A quick dash down the stairs and to Jitter's door confirms what H already knew.

"It not funny, J!" he yells through the door when he hears the older boy giggling hysterically from inside, and yanks his sock down from its pin. It's the fifth time this month and Hunter is getting sick of it. Big kid or not, Jitter is long overdue a little bit of revenge.

It's time for a war council.

"Whoa. You alla sure plan this out down to bits," Zane comments, examining the detailed scale diagram Hunter has drawn out on his whiteboarded wall.

"It just a sketch," Hunter says modestly.

"Look like fun," Vince chirps.

"It look overly complicated," mutters Devon from the other side of the room, where he's lounging against the wall twiddling an unlit cigarette in his slender fingers. "You know the more part involved the more likely something go wrong?"

"How bad can it be? At least give him a chance to 'splain it," V replies brightly.

"Really bad," D grumbles, under his breath so Vince can't hear him.

"Ok so, here how it go," Hunter says, ignoring his friend's entirely typical reaction. Gesturing with a laser pointer, he explains, "At 7:20 I gonna send J a message what look like it from capital G, say come down to the compy lab. When he get there V gonna distract him, ask for maths help. I go distract G just in case so he don' ruin the distraction. While we keep them away, D and Z can sneak inna J's room at 7:26 with a bag—" he holds up a spare pillowcase taken from the linen closet, "and empty out his sock drawer! That should take five minute max, so we'll let J and G go at 7:32 so they can 'scape clean. Then we meet alla back here at 7:35."

"It takes two people to empty a sock drawer?" Devon says, arching a skeptical brow.

"One'a hold the bag and one'a put the socks in," Hunter answers, as though it's obvious. Which it is.

"You really did bit-plan this one," Vince laughs.

"What if someone see us draggin' a bag'a someone else clothes down the hall?" asks D flatly.

"Meh. Doubt anyone'a care," Zane points out, idly clicking his tape measure. "Any letters prolly have a laugh to get back at him—who hasn't had they socks pinned? And if a brass monkey stop us, just lie. We can say it for a game or some stupid thing."

"This is gonna be hilarious," says Vince, barely able to contain his glee. "Gonna be so great…."

"If it work," Devon says darkly.

"What could go wrong? H got it plan down to a molecule."

"Yeah, and the more you plan the more there is to mess up."

"You know," Zane tells the ceiling off-handedly, "Forget Murphy. They shoulda call it Devon's Law."

Devon scowls as the other boys laugh. "Well, Murphy was a pretty observant guy for a wormbait."

"So are we in or not?" Hunter says, bringing them back on track and punching one fist into his other hand eagerly.

"Yeah, sounds great!" Vince agrees immediately.

"Sure, whatever," is Zane's rather less bubbly response, and Devon frowns around his cold cigarette as everyone turns to him.

"Fine, but I still think it gonna hitch," he mutters.

"If you didn't we'd probly take you to the infirmary to get you head checked," H says, grinning. D's grumblings nonwithstanding, he's convinced the Great Sock Heist is guaranteed to proceed seamlessly.

The war council is abruptly interrupted, however, by a loud bang-bang-bang-bang, bang-bang-bang-bang at the door.

"Viiiince! You there? We know you are!" comes Echo's voice.

"No he not! Go away!" Hunter yells back, frowning. Girls are not invited to war councils.

"Don't be a butthead, Tinfoil," the girl retorts through the door. "We not deaf. You got Sunshine and Murphy and Zane all in there with you!"

"How come I don't get a dumb nickname?" Z asks no one in particular.

"You can have mine," Hunter offers irritably. He stopped wearing the 'radio-wave-protection' hat ages ago, but Echo will probably keep calling him that forever. Unless something more embarrassing comes up—heaven forbid.

"We just wanna borrow him for a minute anyway," E goes on. "We can't read he handwriting on these history notes!"

"Borrow him later! We busy!"

"Not laughing at Murphy now, are you?" Devon says smugly.

"It no big deal, H. I don't mind helpin' 'em," says Vince. "It only take a second."

"That not the point," Hunter protests. "We in a meeting. Boys only!"

"Well, sorry for messing up you clubhouse," E says sniffily. "Can't you just spend an extra hour later throwin' rocks at fences or biting frogs or whatever it is boys do to exorcise our girly infection of your stupid meeting?"

"I bet I could kick the door down," Wiley's voice suggests.

"That a good idea, Dubs, go for it."

"Just let 'em in. Get it over with or they never gonna go away," Zane says, rolling his eyes.

"Well—fine," H grumbles reluctantly.

"Thanks for gettin' through to Tinfoil, Zany," Echo says breezily when he opens the door grudgingly for her and Wiley. "He can be so stubborn and immature."

"…Zany? Somehow I feel like you didn't really try very hard'a come up with that," Z comments as Hunter scowls at her.

"Well, do somethin' stupid and I come up with somethin' better," she replies generously, flopping down on the floor and making herself right at home next to Vince. Wiley hesitates before joining her, awkwardly folding her fast-growing limbs down; they're all just barely eleven and she's already shot up almost a head taller than every boy in the room.

"What happened'a C? Why don't you get her to help you with it?" Devon asks, noticeably altering his stance to lean more elegantly and flourishing the cigarette with practiced careless grace.

"She hasn't even started on the history essay yet. Too bogged workin' on kickin' your butt on the Innovative Engineering project," Echo says distractedly, watching over V's shoulder as he rewrites more clearly all the bits on the page that she and W have circled in bright pink pen. "She probly puttin' firecrackers in you desk while you busy scrumbling around with—" she glances askance up at Hunter's whiteboard. "The 'Great Sock Heist.' What the heck kinda wormbait project is that?"

"Hey! That's secret! No girls!" Hunter roars, rushing to roll another whiteboard panel in front of his diagram.

"I can see why," Wiley comments dryly.

"V, are you done yet?"

"Just about," the other boy says cheerfully. "There y'go. Zat everything?"

"Yeppers. Those few quick little teeny tiny clarifications were all we needed," Echo says, looking pointedly at Hunter. "Thanks, Sunshine, you the bestest."

"Ok, then go away," snaps H.

"Bye, weirdos," she says in parting as the two girls head out, and he snaps the door shut behind them and locks it.

"Bye!" Vince calls back.

"Don't answer to that!" Hunter says irritably, shaking his head and trying to recollect his dignity. Stupid E, ruining their deadly-serious war council. What do girls know about planning legendary heists in the name of vengeance, anyway?

Chapter 42: Letters

He's starting to get concerned and Hopper's not one to stew in his anxiety so the third time Dex slips off on a Wednesday afternoon he follows him and witnesses his best friend letting himself out the front gate and walking briskly down the road toward Winchester.

When he comes back an hour later, Hopper is lounging against the wall with a book, waiting.

"Should I be worried 'bout you?"

Because there's plenty he might worry about. They'd both already been feeling amputated and unbalanced since Concord left, and then there was L and Mr. W being killed so suddenly and all, and, well—things have just changed a lot.

D has to stop and think about it, Hopper can see it, even though it's a mere split second. "No," he says, and then, before H even has to ask where the hell he's been going, "Wanna come with next week?"

---

It's overcast and spitting half-heartedly out but Hopper still considers himself a country boy at heart (though he's become anything but) and several years of tuning and meteorology classes have driven in the fact that Winchester just doesn't have tornados, so he doesn't mind too much. They stride along through the puddles with their hoods up and hands shoved deep in their zip-up pockets. There's no need to ask Dex where they're going, or why. He'll find out when they get there.

Hopper didn't have any expectations, but he's still surprised when they arrive at the Kings Worthy post office. He's never been inside one before, and isn't sure what to make of it now. Dex produces a key from his pocket and goes directly for the wall of post boxes. Hopper waits by the front window and bemusedly skims over the ads posted there. Car For Sale. Looking for Babysitter. Swim with GymCo at King's Pool. The babysitter is the one that really catches his eye. He's not entirely sure what a babysitter is—it can't possibly be what it literally sounds like.

Dex taps him on the arm to get his attention. Hopper actually did hear him approach. He is listening to everything right now, is watching everything at once. Nothing is familiar. The unconscious effort of keeping a lookout for any danger that might spring out at them is pulling his neck and shoulders wire-tight.

His friend is holding a letter—an honest-to-God paper snail-mail letter, stamp and all. Hopper almost forgot those existed.

"I think there's a sort of a…pub…restaurant…across the street," D says, speaking in Swedish. He seems just as uncomfortable and edgy Out here as Hopper feels, eyes catching on everything that moves, even though he must have been in this very place before, alone. H already had a lot of respect for his friend but he's still pretty impressed that he had the nerve to come rent the post box in the first place, and wonders if one of the brass helped him. "We could grab a bite before going back."

His gut reaction is to reply, "Why the hell would we want to do that?" but it hits him like a bucket of water on a winter morning that a year from now, they won't have a House to go back to. They'll be living Outside full time, and they might as well get used to it now.

So they head over to The Cart & Horses and are ushered to a tiny table by a window. They both order the soup of the day because it's the first item listed on the chalkboard at the front. They've used menus a couple times before on field trips, but…small steps.

Hopper scopes out the place while Dex slits open his letter and reads it. The table really is miniscule compared to the great long ones in the dining hall at home. A nanotable. He's not sure if any dishes will actually fit along with the salt and pepper and assortment of other condiments already there. It's weirdly quiet, too, nothing like the chattering chaos of the House at mealtimes; the only other customers are up at the bar, and the two of them are tucked into an out-of-the-way nook. His eyes go to the ceiling and corners of the room to find the cameras and he is startled to discover there are none. That makes him feel even more uneasy. Then with a jolt he realizes that both he and Dex have automatically turned in their chairs to put their backs to the wall, facing outward so they can't be walked up on, and he can't help but chuckle a little at their own paranoia.

"Want to read it?"

His friend has finished reading his mystery letter, and is proffering it tentatively.

"It's from C," Dex says. "She wouldn't mind."

Paper mail from Concord, is it? Whose fingers are practically wired into her computer keyboard? That's telling in itself. Carefully, because he can tell that it's important to D despite his off-handed tone, Hopper accepts the paper and unfolds it. It's slow going (her painstaking cursive and spelling are truly atrocious) but he's only a few lines in before it becomes clear that the tone of this letter is radically different from the slew of sisterly catch-up, vent-and-rant, I-miss-you-all emails he's gotten from her. Skipping down to the bottom, the final salutation confirms suspicions he's been keeping to himself for well over a year.

Love, Bethany.

"Wow," he hears himself say, and he's quietly astonished and not surprised at all at the same time. Dex is watching him sidelong to gauge his reaction, fiddling anxiously with his napkin. Hopper lets his grin break free and claps his friend on the shoulder. "About damn time."

And Dex grins back, relieved and practically shining.

"Best and worst moment of my life," D confesses a little while later. They're still speaking in Swedish. No one seems to be listening and Hopper is pretty sure that Outside doesn't have bugs everywhere like the House does, but it can't hurt to be cautious.

"Worst?" He blows on his soup to cool it. It's good. Not as good as Constance could make it though. "She gave you her name. Pretty serious stuff. Too serious too soon?"

"No," says Dex. "It's just—" his eyes drop to the table and his voice drops to a whisper. "I can't remember my name."

Hopper's spoon hovers, forgotten, in front of his open mouth.

"Yeah." Mouth tight, D rips off a chunk of bread and dunks it a little more aggressively than necessary into his soup. "Went to Warden and asked, after. Turns out when they destroy our records, they really destroy our records. He say Mr. W the only one who keep the record. And, well."

"They fizzt when he pulled the plug," H finishes for him.

"So there I am, she just give me her name and I…." Dex makes an empty gesture. "Got nothing."

"That wouldn't matter to Concord."

"Yeah. I know," he says broodingly. "Still."

"Yeah."

"I gotta find that name."

It's surreal, having this conversation with the man who's been his best friend since they were eight, in a pub Outside on the edge of Winchester. They probably know almost everything there is to know about each other, and for what seems like the first time he realizes that 'almost everything' isn't 'everything'. He's not sure how important he thinks those gaps are, but now that his mind is on it, it occurs to him he has no reason to keep something like his name secret from Dex and Concord, not anymore. The succession has already long passed them by. It's habit more than anything—he's been Hopper longer than he was Amos.

He won't give it now, though, and make Dex feel worse. The guy is finally starting to move on from that horrible nightmare with Alt and B, and the last thing he needs is to have this whole name thing rubbed in his face so he can beat himself up about it. It can wait.

"Where you gonna start?"

"London," says D, hesitantly at first, then growing bolder. "I think…I remember roundabout where my last foster family lived. I think I'd know it if I saw it."

Another thing they're not supposed to talk about.

"Big place," Hopper says. "You gonna need a hand poking around?"

Dex meets his eyes, and finally his gloomy expression dissipates. "Yeah," he says, "I reckon I will. You know the area at all?"

"Not a bit," says H. "Never lived in a city in my life. My folks were Amish." He feels a little thrill as he says it, the tremor of strangeness between breaking the iron-hard taboo about mentioning family and the offhand tone in which it comes out.

D blinks, startled. "No shit. The ones who don't use electricity?"

"We used generators for some stuff. Just not on the grid. Keep to themselves."

"Huh," Dex muses, "kinda like the House, really." And then he chuckles a little. "And now you probably the best electrical engineer on the planet."

"Go figure," says Hopper, and for some reason it's hilarious and they laugh themselves silly for nearly five minutes straight, and when they finally stop, gasping and wiping tears from their eyes, they both feel a lot lighter and Outside doesn't seem quite as bad as it did when they got here.

"It prob'ly Cuthbert," Hopper says as they're walking back home through the murky drizzle. "Always thought you look like a Cuthbert."

"Do not," Dex laughs, giving his friend a shove toward the ditch.

"Or Bartholomew, maybe."

"Shut it, Hop."

Chapter 43: Perch

When Solar was a little girl—well, littler than she is now—her most prized possession was a picture book given to her by the Red Cross people. The corners were worn and there was a small tear on page three, but it had pretty pictures in bright greens and blues and yellows, and she would read it over and over and over because it was the only book she had. After a while a volunteer noticed that the three-year-old actually was, in fact, reading the book, and not just the story but the author's biographical paragraph and the publishing information, and brought her some of his own books.

Even when she had the selection of paperback adventures the Red Cross man lent her, the picture book was her favorite. It was about a little white girl with blonde pigtails and a little white boy in a green hat whose daddy built them a tree house.

Solar did not have a tree house, nor a daddy, but she liked pretending as much as she liked reading, so she would climb trees instead with her book and nestle in a fork and read it over and over until it was memorized and still read the words anyway. And then the Red Cross man brought Mr. W to meet her, and he said she could have all the books she wanted.

And he wasn't lying. Solar doesn't read the tree house book very often anymore; there are far too many other fascinating books to get through, and she only has 100 years tops to read as many as possible. A small, quiet part of her has considered asking if they could build a tree house, but she has learned that she's getting on just fine without a daddy and so she can get on just fine without a tree house too. Still, she likes to climb the trees in the yard and read, and even write her own books. It's a nice place to be away from the chaos of the House and relax into her own thoughts.

Usually, anyway. Today it's not so great.

"Hey! Solar! Come play GlassWorld with us!"

Solar glances down through the rustling leaves at her friends on the ground. Raphael and Paolo are practically hopping with anticipation, and Ochre is trailing to catch up, pouty lips set in a frown and arms crossed over her chest.

"I don' feel like it," she says, turning back to her notebook and pretending to be engrossed in writing.

"Whaaat? You were all excited to play yesterday!" Raphael accuses incredulously. "Now Matt finally promise us a good long turn and you gonna pass up so you can sit in a stupid tree and write? You been up there since lunch!"

Solar shifts a little. It's true—she's been up here for almost two hours now, and between the heat and the stream of ants she discovered crawling on this branch, it's extremely uncomfortable. "Maybe later."

"We don' got later, we got now," Paolo protests. "He not gonna let us have it all day."

"Get Train to play with you."

"But he always win!"

"Come on," Ochre mutters, "let's just go. She don' wanna play, she not gonna play. Sittin' here arguing is boring."

"Well—fine," says R, then shouts up at her as they turn to go back into the cool shade of the House, "but you being lame!"

Solar scowls, flicking a few ants off her branch in frustration. She really, really was looking forward to playing GlassWorld, the eerie, surreal puzzle-quest that Matt designed and Aris rendered for the science fair this summer—it's been a huge hit with all the kids, and it's almost impossible to get a turn to play, especially being the littlest at the House. But—well—she's a bit…preoccupied at the moment.

When she's positive no one is looking anymore, she sticks her green notebook in the back waistband of her jeans again and makes another attempt. Clinging to the branch beside hers and leaning forward precariously, she stretches one foot down as far as it will go. It's a good several handspans shy of the next branch down. Solar can picture, in her mind, how it would work: slip off of the branch, let her feet land on the lower limb, steady herself against the trunk of the tree. Unfortunately, she can also picture her feet slipping, or not landing square, can imagine herself falling and landing on the ground, a good four yards down. Four yards is a pretty big deal when you're only about four feet tall yourself.

It seems impossible in retrospect that she even got up here in the first place—it sure didn't look this high from down there! She's been trying to reach this stupid limb for ages and now that she's finally up here, she's already heartily sick of it.

She'll just try again later, S tells herself, easing back up onto the branch and shaking off the adrenaline. It's not that big of a deal, she just…doesn't feel like coming down right now. Maybe she feels like writing for a little bit longer instead. Perhaps she ought to think of it as fate encouraging her to work on her book.

"Solar! You still birdin' around up there?"

Paolo and Ochre are back, peering up at her quizzically through the interlaced branches. It's been an atypically hot afternoon, her butt hurts from sitting on this stupid branch, and her mouth is parched. All of that combined with the annoyance of her current predicament are making her cranky.

"Not birding around. I writing my book," she says a little snippily, scribbling in her notebook: I hate this stupid tree. I hope it gets some horrible blight and all its leaves fall off.

"You stuck up there, huh?" Ochre sighs.

"You need some help gettin' down?" asks Paolo helpfully.

"I not stuck," Solar says, shifting to find a more comfortable position. "I just don' feel like comin' down yet."

Ochre sighs again, and manages to make it sound like a monumental effort. "I'll go get Wiley," she says dully.

"Not necessary."

"It'll be ok, Essie, Dubs can getcha down," says Paolo.

Solar twists her pen in her hands for a moment, then calls out in desperation when she sees Ochre turning to go fetch the older girl as promised, "Wait, no! She'll tell Crash and Echo and I'll never hear the end of it!"

"So you admit you stuck at least," P teases, as O releases a yet more aggravated sigh.

"Well, who 'round here that also freakishly tall that you would be ok with?"

"Jitter and Gao are back," suggests Paolo. "J might help."

"Yeah, and big G even worse than C and E! No way," snaps Solar from her perch.

"What about Jeremy or Gavin?"

"No. If any of the brass monkeys find out they won't let me climb up here anymore."

"That sound like a bonus to me," Ochre drones after some consideration. "I be right back."

"Can't you just get a ladder instead?" Solar says pleadingly.

"Gavin can get a ladder. You think I gonna climb up there and help you down it?"

"I could," Paolo volunteers.

Ochre stares at him flatly for a slow five counts. "No."

Despite the unpleasantness of the alternatives, Solar has to agree. He's eager to help, but as a general rule P and his eager helpfulness are more of a hindrance than a help. On the other hand, that doesn't make her more amenable to the alternatives.

"Maybe you guys could just pile some pillows and stuff down there and I just jump," she suggests.

"Hey, yeah! How 'bout that?" Paolo says, turning excitedly to Ochre, who gives the barest roll of her eyes and starts back toward the House.

"I'm gettin' Gavin now."

"Ochre! Get back here!" Steadfastly ignoring her, the other girl continues to trudge away. "Okie!"

Paolo blinks up at her owlishly. "Oh…you know she don' like it when you call her that, da?"

"I know that. I tryin'a make her mad so she come back," Solar explains with fraying patience to the boy. It's not working, though, and she didn't really expect it would. O's tiny form is already marching purposefully up the front steps, and she marches right inside without pausing for even an instant. Darnit.

"Ok, P, hurry," Solar urges. "Go get something for me to jump down on before they come back!"

"Eh…I don' know, Essie…I don' think I could go and come back fast enough before she find someone…don' think that physically possible." He plucks at his lip thoughtfully, and Solar resists the urge to throw her notebook at his head. "Hey! I could prolly catch you though, hao ba?" The stringy boy stretches out his arms encouragingly. "Come on, I can break you fall."

"Bu hao a! No way! I don't—argh!" It's too late. Ochre is already coming back, leading not Gavin or Jeremy or even Wiley or Jitter, but Hopkins.

"I'm doomed forever," Solar moans.

"At least you gonna be outta the tree," P says helpfully.

Chapter 44: Calling

Summary:

The prayer Nina remembers her mother saying is the Catholic Ave Maria.

Nina almost walks right into the infirmary, but stops short when she sees Karter.

It's not that it's Karter, of course—he gets out of class earlier than she does on Tuesday afternoons, so she expected he'd be here with Lo. It's what he's doing that makes her pause.

Lazlo is still bound up in the rolly-wrap, and appears to be asleep. Or, more likely, he's been sedated. His cinnamon face somehow manages to look wan even against the white pillowcase.

Karter has pulled up a chair close to the bed. Elbows planted on the edge of the mattress and forehead pressed to his knotted hands, he's got his eyes closed and his mouth is moving, as though he's speaking silently to someone Nina can't see. Peeking around the edge of the doorway, she watches, nonplussed. For a whole ninety seconds (which is a long time for K to sit completely still of his own accord, and who knows how long he's been at it?) he does this, while Lo sleeps and N looks on and wonders what on earth her friend is doing. Is Karter having a breakdown too? He certainly looks like he's taken a step deeper into crazy, muttering to himself like that.

It suddenly snaps into place as a memory comes back to her, fragmented and elusive, of the red-and-white circle pattern of her mother's dress that she liked to trace with her fingers and the falling cadence of her mother's scratchy voice murmuring something-something-something grátia pléna, something-something-something grátia pléna.

Finally he finishes, opening his eyes and sighing to himself, reflexively checking his watches before settling back in the chair, and Nina silently resolves just as abruptly as she realized who Karter must be talking to that she's not going to bring it up, because it's private and personal and none of her business no matter how curious she is.

Her brain and her tongue are pretty much never in agreement over what is actually going to be blurted out, though, so when K sees her and says, "Hey, Nina," and she opens her mouth to say something along the lines of, "Hey, I stopped by you room and got you homework," the exact words she decided not to say pop out instead.

"Were you praying just now?"

Karter's eyes go round as coins, cheeks heating, but then he braces his shoulders. "Yeah," he says a little defensively. "I was."

"Sorry," Nina says immediately, jerking her incredulous gaze away and addressing the corner of Lazlo's bed. "I, you know I didn't—I mean, I wasn't—it's not my—"

"It ok," he interrupts. "It not like it really…." Laughing awkwardly, he fiddles with the hem of his sleeve, rolling his wrist over to check the time again. "Thought maybe he need all the help we can get him. Don't know if it work or not. Can't hurt, da?"

"Yeah. Yeah, I guess," Nina mumbles, and really, she thinks, he's got a point and she feels like a twit now. Jerkily, she thrusts Karter's calculus book at him. "Here."

"Thanks," K says, accepting it with a sigh and regarding the obnoxiously cheerful cover wearily. Even his wild curly hair seems a little wilted, and N wonders if he's been sleeping and before she can tamp the thought down

"Gotta rest more, K. Else you gonna crack."

Wincing, Nina curses herself silently. As if there was anything worse she could say with Lazlo right here, sedated and with his mouth packed to protect his shredded gums.

Karter and Lo both are used to her tendency to blurt out the first thing on her mind, though, and it's not like every other student in this place hasn't thought the same thing at least once a week, if not every day. Smiling, with effort at first, he drops the book to the floor with a thunk and lounges back in the chair, propping his feet on the bedframe. "Ditto."

Nina ends up setting her own books down too, pulling up a chair and folding her feet up under herself. "How he doing?"

"Twitch he finger 'bout an hour back. Most exciting part of he afternoon," Karter replies with a lopsided smile that doesn't quite dispel the anxiety in his eyes.

"Glad to hear he keepin' busy," N says, attempting to mirror his light-hearted tone.

K's right. It's slow time, keeping vigil over Lazlo, who stirs occasionally but shows no sign of waking. The textbooks on the floor nag at her attention. It's only Tuesday but everyone else is already studying for Friday quizzes. Ten minutes in Nina glances down at them at the same moment that Karter checks his watch, and they exchange a guilty glance.

She kicks the books under the Lazlo's bed while he peels off his watches and shoves them into his pocket.

"I don't think I ever seen you with those off," her mouth says before taking the time to run it by her brain first.

Karter shrugs, rubbing his clammy white wrist uncomfortably. The outline of each watch is clearly visible. "Well. Been a few years."

Then they settle in to wait some more.

It's not like this is unusual. Students have breakdowns all the time. Just months ago K broke down in hysterical tears during final exams because the grandfather clock in the common room was four seconds off. That same term Nina herself had to be coaxed and eventually pried out of bed and carried down to lunch by the matron after a day and a half of refusing to get out from under the covers, she was so depressed about her midterm composition project score. This was a lot scarier than those two instances, though: the fixed way Lazlo stared at the mirror, robotically brushing and brushing and brushing while the toothpaste foamed up pink and red.

Waiting is hard. She feels like they ought to be doing something, formulating plans and working out steps. There are no plans to make, though, and no steps to follow. Just waiting, and even that really does Lazlo little or no good.

"He really did do awful on that test," N murmurs to herself a while later.

It's not a criticism. They all have their own particular skills, and statistics just happens to not be Lazlo's, despite all the time K spent trying to work through the practice problems with him. It's when a student starts freaking out over an A- that the brass start to worry and the rumors about scrubbing start to ripple through the wires. Getting like this over a D+ is understandable, even expected.

"I'm scared for him."

Karter's eyes crack open, and he nods in agreement. She would have thought he was asleep if it weren't for the way his knee is jittering. It's getting late. Nina got up before dawn this morning and crashed after midnight last night, and she's pillowed her head on her arms at the edge of the bed. She may have dozed off but isn't sure.

It doesn't mean anything bad necessarily but she thought Lo would wake up by now.

"Maybe we could—you know—help some more," she says tentatively, knotting her fingers together uncertainly.

For a fleeting moment K looks helpless and frustrated, but then he nods decisively. "Might as well."

Nina can't remember if she's ever prayed before and the idea of it makes her feel small, like she's blind and deaf and calling out on a roadside in the rather flimsy hope that some stranger might be passing by. Following Karter's lead, she interlaces her hands and closes her eyes. She doesn't know any prayers, so she just tries to think loudly.

I don't know if anything is out there listening, but my friend might be in trouble….

Chapter 45: Astronauts

"No!" Mello screams, and man, that kid has a pair of lungs. Stella didn't really agree at first with Marta putting the two new children in a separate hall from the rest of the students' dormitories, but after a few weeks, it's pretty obvious why it was done. All the older students pretty well go to bed to either sleep or study in their rooms without having to be told; they're tired, or busy, or else have the sense to keep down the volume if they are wandering to visit each other. Even despite the walls and rooms in between, she wouldn't be surprised if little M has managed to wake some or all of them up with all this shouting and running around.

The aides have all become a little complacent, perhaps—they haven't had to deal with a child this skittish since Fallon was his age. He bit Moira the other day, Stella heard. She knows Mello is only exhausted and scared, just woken from a nightmare and still not used to his new home, but it is still difficult not to get impatient with him when he screams like that.

"If you're not sleepy, you can pick out some of the toys in here and take them back to your room to play with," the young woman suggests, carefully neutral. Like facing a bear cub: soft voice, slow movements, so not to spook it.

"No! Go away!"

"Mello, I'm right here. You don't need to yell," Stella says quietly. "What would you like to do?"

"Nothing! Jus' leave me 'lone!"

She can't just leave Mello unsupervised in the common room in the middle of the night, of course. To be honest, Stella is not entirely sure what to do. The child has wedged himself behind the couch and refuses to come out, and to pull him out would obviously go against their instructions to avoid touching him if at all possible.

"Come on, Mello," she starts gently, though she's not entirely sure where she's going to go from there, other than possibly bribing him with candy, and then Ma Marta is bustling in with her hair unbound and her housecoat on and a rather cross look on her tired face. Clearly Mello has woken one person up, if not the entire House.

"Sorry," Stella apologizes, but the matron cuts her off, saying, "Look, zis how you deal with zis one."

"I heard that! You can't make me come out!"

"I am not here to make you do anysing. I need your help. Your leetle friend is haffing trouble sleeping again."

There's a tense pause, then Mello's red-rimmed blue eyes peek at them suspiciously over the back of the couch. "…Near can't sleep again?"

"Zat's right. Maybe if you come play with him a leetle bit he will become tired."

"Near needs me?"

"Yes, he vas asking for you."

There's that long moment, then, that Stella has come to recognize, and that sets the kids here apart from every child she has ever met Outside: Mello considers, eyeing them and clearly weighing the likelihood of the matron's claims against what he knows of Near and what he knows of Marta and how far he thinks they would stretch the truth to coax him out.

And there are no lies here to detect, actually. The quiet toddler has only slept through the night a handful of times in the weeks since they arrived. So far they've been handling it by letting him stay up with an aide and watch tv, because no matter how many times they put him to bed he crawls out and huddles against his door in a forlorn little ball until someone comes to get him. Near is too young to take sleeping medication but Stella thinks they're going to have to start sedating him if it keeps up. And as for his asking for Mello—well, pretty much all he ever asks for is toys or Mello.

"Ok," Mello finally says, and Stella can't help but cheer a little inside. It's good to see that he's coming to trust them a little at least.

"Is he in the game room again?" she asks Marta as the little boy warily creeps out of his hidey-hole, and the Matron nods in affirmation.

"Jerzy is watching him. He still just wants to watch zat same video, over and over again."

"Hm. Well, that's not surprising." While she's grateful to have the perfect method of calming Mello down handed to her, having to sit through the space launch documentary for the twenty-sixth time cancels out a hefty percentage of her gratitude.

"Alrighty then," Stella says, keeping the resignation out of her voice. "Hear that, Mello? Let's go find Near and Jerzy."

"I can go by myself!"

Which could very well be true, but isn't the point. Students aren't supposed to roam alone at night. Gao, protesting the same rule when not much older than Mello, had once snappily pointed out to her, "Look here, lady, I live on de street of Beijing for year by mysel'. I tink I can get water from kitchen by mysel'!" Not so many months ago, though, Alt and Backup gave them a pretty good reason to continue to enforce the rule.

And anyway, it probably protects the safety of everyone else more than the child doing the roaming.

"Come now, Mello, perhaps Stella vill vant to go vatch the movie with you as vell."

"No, I don't want her! I want to play with Near, not her!"

In the end, he runs on ahead as Stella and Marta follow after, making sure to shoot several dirty looks back at them.

"Near!" he shouts, barging into the game room.

"Well, hello," says Jerzy, blinking hard. The aide is lounging on one end of the sofa, looking as though he's ready to disintegrate into a moldering pile of boredom (Stella can't blame him, he's probably watching that wretched documentary for the fourth consecutive time tonight) and Near is on the other end as far away as possible, perched on the very edge with one foot hanging down and a sipper cup clutched in his tiny hands. In stark contrast to poor Jerzy's glazed stupor, the child is staring wide-eyed at the TV like it's the most mesmerizing thing he's ever seen. His face tilts slightly at the other boy's shout.

"Mo?"

"What're you watching?" Mello demands, flinging himself onto the couch and nearly making the smaller boy drop his milk.

"He vill be fine now," Marta says, giving Stella a pat on the shoulder and turning around. "He vill be quiet. Finally."

"Sorry," Stella calls after the matron as she heads back to bed, then goes to join Jerzy on the sofa. Mello gives her a nasty look, grabbing Near by the arm and hopping off the sofa again, dragging his friend along with him.

"Come on, Near. Let's go sit closer."

"Mk," hums Near agreeably, shuffling after him and plonking himself down on the floor where Mello stops him.

"How's his foot?" Stella murmurs to Jerzy, as Mello proceeds to interrogate Near about the video.

The other aide rubs at his eyes a little, blinking himself awake. "Seems pretty good. Still favors it a little but it doesn't seem to be hurting him. Why's that one not in bed?"

"Nightmares."

"Ah."

"This movie is boring," Mello announces (Stella privately agrees). "Let's play a game instead."

"What game?" says Near, eyes still fixed on the screen.

"We're going to play Astronauts! You and me are the astronauts."

"Wiv a shuttle?"

"Yep, we have big space shuttle like that." Mello points at the TV, where a space shuttle is indeed taking off in a flurry of smoke and flame. "And we're going to fight the aliens!"

Near considers. "Why we fight the a-leens?"

"Because we're competing for the same natural resources," Mello explains. "They have the fuel we need for the shuttle. And they're mean and ugly, and they eat people!"

Another long moment of consideration. "I don't want to be eated."

"Don't worry, stupid, I'm not going to let them eat you," says Mello impatiently. "We're going to blow all their heads off first. Come on!"

"Do you think he'll notice if we put some other video on?" Stella whispers as the two kids rifle through the toy bins along the wall looking for supplies and weapons and bouncy balls, which Near has solemnly pointed out are alien eggs and must all be destroyed to prevent further propagation of the enemy.

"I have a feeling we won't have a chance to," Jerzy says just as Mello (now with a bucket on his head and an empty water gun in each hand) points at the two aides and yells, "Ready Near? Let's get the aliens!"

Chapter 46: Outing

"Alright, guys, count off! Over, where'd you go? Start us off, will you?" Addison calls out.

"O!"

"P."

"Q."

"R!"

"S…."

There's a pause, and it's not for T because Traction wasn't around long enough to ever have to do a count off. Hanging her head so her bangs fall in front of her eyes and she doesn't have to see everyone staring around for her, Una gives Addison's parka sleeve a small tug.

"We'll take that as a U. Keep going, guys…."

"V!"

"W."

"Y."

"Z."

"A…."

It's wet and it's loud and it's horrible and Una hates it all. Well, ok, hate is a strong word, and she doesn't much care for strong words. She dislikes it. She doesn't particularly like it. It stopped drizzling before they got off the charter bus, at least, but London is all rainslick concrete and car horns and streams of people in wet-shiny jackets, and Una finds it all quite overwhelming and unpleasant. Even the hour-and-a-half on the bus, packed with kids ranging from loudly excited to go Outside to loudly denying they're petrified to be Outside, was better than this.

"…S."

"T!"

"Alright, that's everyone. Everybody listening? Good. Now remember, we're going to go on a tour with one of the museum guides. I want you to be on your best behavior—we're here to learn, not show off. Wisdom means knowing how to use your intelligence, so let's not be a bunch of stupid geniuses. We're going to be respectful of both people and of museum property. Take the signs seriously and don't pick on the guide or you won't be coming on the next trip, understand?" The librarian throws a sharp look at Rom and Over.

"Yes, Addison," comes back the ragged chorus.

"After the tour we'll break into our buddy groups and you can look around the museum. Everyone remember who your leader is?" Murmurs of confirmation, and some kids point to their aide leaders. "Excellent. After that we'll go to a restaurant for lunch. Is everyone clear on the plan?"

Another reply of agreement, this one significantly more enthusiastic at the mention of wandering the Science Museum without a tour guide and of food.

"Excellent. Well let's get inside, then, before it starts raining again."

"Wa sai!" Geia whispers to her, staring around. Una can't possibly imagine a place that is less Houselike, with the slick glass and blue lights and sharp stairs and walkways everywhere and echoes of conversation—and the people. There are so many different kinds of people milling through the Science Museum entry hall as they file in through the glass doors—all different colors and shapes, like at the House, but also all different ages, from babies to children to teens to adults to an old woman with a wheelchair and a thin cloud of white curls, who is easily the oldest person U has seen in person since last year's field trips. True, Roger and Hopkins are super old, but they're not ancient like that. G goggles unabashedly when Una nudges her arm and points to a man holding a little girl's hand and a woman with a stroller next to him. "So weird…."

It's more than she can deal with. Looping her arm in Geia's, she keeps her head down and her eyes on Aris's shoes. The other girl has strung one of her hand-fired glass beads on the shoelace of each one, bright orange with flecks of gold, and bright against the practically unworn white sneakers. Without much effort Una sinks into that little ball of fire, shutting out the surf and pull and flow of people around their little group.

She's not sure how Outside has become such a surreal place to her. Perhaps it's because the Outside where she grew up was so different from London and Winchester and probably all of England, as far as she knows. There's no gunfire rat-tat-tatting randomly in the strangely rainy streets, there are free water fountains everywhere, everyone is in a hurry but no one is scared. It's not the Outside she remembers and it's not the House, and those are the only places she's familiar with. London seems more like an odd fantasy cooked up by idiots with more imagination than common sense than a real place. She's sort of interested in seeing the displays here, but she sort of wants to go home.

"Uh oh," Sember murmurs on her other side, and Una looks up through her hair.

Addison has that frowny-line between his eyes, and he's talking to an Outsider with a nametag in that low but firm voice that he uses when he's about two steps away from kicking someone out of his library.

"Come on," Geia whispers, edging them closer. They're not the only ones—except for Paran and Qarri and a few of the other older kids, who are making an effort to look bored and aloof, all of the House students are gathering subtly around to eavesdrop.

"—what was indicated," Addison is saying. "I was under the clear impression that this would be a private tour group."

"Well, it isn't a public tour group," says the unLettered man apologetically. "Scheduling was tight this week, so we've put you together with another school group. We didn't think anyone would object—"

Addison brushes off his excuses with a long hand, and it suddenly strikes Una how very tall the librarian is. Of course, he's taller than everyone at the House, but they're a bunch of kids. Maybe Outsiders are just shorter than she remembers. "Can't you reschedule them? Surely there can be some rearrangement. We made this appointment six months ago with the understanding that certain accommodations could be made."

The students are getting riled up by this point, and Una feels a sick little chill. Having to listen to some wormbait blather through his notecards about the museum is unpleasant enough, but to have to endure it with a bunch of unLettered kids too?

Ew.

Sometimes at the House they watch "kiddie" shows on the TV, for a joke. Wormbait kids are…well, Una doesn't want to be judgmental. But they certainly seem to get caught up in things that are not too important or interesting. From the way TV makes it look, it's the kids who think more about their studies than their looks that are the weak ones, and the ones with power in the social structure are the ones who wear certain clothes or have the most overdone hair, even though they're morons. That makes no sense at all. UnLettered people make no sense at all.

Her silent sentiment is echoed in whispers and disgusted sideways glances exchanged through their little cluster, but is by no means the only one. Crash and Echo look as though New Year's is coming twice this year, and Jordan grins evilly and actually starts to say out loud, "Well this could be a lotta f—" before Faris stomps inconspicuously down on his foot.

Apparently no accommodation can be made. Frowning like a thunderhead, Addison herds the lot of them over to a relatively out-of-the-way corner of the lobby.

"Alright, guys. I know you all heard the man," the librarian says, with a touch of his usual wryness. "We're going to be joined on our tour by some students from…from another school."

"Wormbaits," and "Outsiders," the whispers ripple through the group, and Addison glares furiously. "All of you listen to me," he says in a low voice, and they gather closer to hear him. "I don't have to tell you these kids are not like you. Everything I said before applies doubly. And before you go thinking you're going to be clever and just bait them a little bit, think about this. Would Mr. W be proud if he could see his students picking on kids that are less clever than them?"

It's been less than a year since his death. The lecture has exactly the effect intended. Even R and O look sobered.

"That's what I thought. Keep that in mind. Don't tease them, don't bait them—just stick together and listen to the tour guide, alright?"

"Yes, Addison," is the muted (and somewhat grudging) reply.

Well, so, that's that. They're going on a tour with some Outsider kids. Una doesn't much know what to make of that, so she decides to pretend it isn't happening.

This proves to be more difficult than usual. U doesn't exactly blame Jordan, though he certainly has a hand in it. She had no problem at all wrapping herself in her own little world of reading vaguely interesting display plaques and tuning out the tour guide and following wherever G led before he started talking.

"Jus' talkin' to 'em not baitin', da?" he whispers to Faris right behind her and Geia. Of course, Jordan's whispering is something along the lines of a normal person's slightly raised voice. The tour guide forges on over him, Addison raises his brows and makes his volume-dial gesture, and there's that familiar clomp of F's foot digging into J's.

Now that she's present again, Una notices the unLettered kids for the first time. They're all wearing the exact same outfit, which is a little bit creepy, and more of them seem to be watching the House kids than are listening to the tour guide. She dislikes having eyes on her, and U wonders if they really stand out that badly or if these kids are just really rude, or really bored. It's true that the tour is a little dull—they keep passing by all the interesting-looking displays. In either case, those kids are definitely staring. For some reason Karter is getting a lot of odd looks, which is clearly unnerving him, as he keeps fiddling with the straps of his watches, and so is Quinn, who is ogling right back and keeps reaching for the camera that Addison made her leave on the bus. Una's starting to feel self-conscious on their behalf, and hides behind Geia whenever they're standing still for any length of time.

"Hey. Hey you."

"Bad idea, J," Faris breathes almost silently.

It's too late. Jordan has managed to get the attention of a sandy-haired unLettered boy who's been one of the worst with the staring. They're walking down a long hallway with Addison up ahead of them, and J has worked his way over to fall into step with the stranger just in front of Una and Geia.

"Hi," says Sandy-Hair, giving Jordan an appraising up-and-down look. "What school are you guys from, anyway?"

"It's just a summer camp," J lies glibly. "So what letter—um, what do people call you?"

Sandy-Hair gives him a strange look. "…My name's Jaime. You?"

"Jordan! Hey, that mean we both J! See that F, they not so bad." He elbows Faris in the shoulder, and the other boy shrugs uncomfortably. Una can see that he's probably dying to give J a hefty kick in the ankle, but doesn't want to make a scene.

Meanwhile Jaime is exchanging that same strange look with the kid next to him. "Right…so what's up with the weird watch kid?"

Through their linked arms, Una can feel G tensing.

"Huh?" Jordan looks around in genuine confusion. "Watch kid?"

The two unLettered boys snicker a little. "How could you miss him? He's got three watches on. Is he trying to be cool or what?"

"We never asked. He just wears them," Geia interrupts before J can open his mouth.

"Sounds like a freak," Jaime's friend mutters.

"Who's he calling a freak?" Nina says suddenly, turning around in front of J and F.

"No one, Nina," G says, as Lazlo, who's apparently also been eavesdropping on the little exchange, grabs N's arm, forces her to keep walking, and hisses in Spanish, "Ignore the wormbait, N."

"Hey, what did you call us?" demands Jaime.

"Look guys, they have an exhibit on sciences in the 18th century," Sember interjects in an unnaturally loud tone, making an obvious attempt to distract them. "We should go take a look in groups later and get ideas for the Renaissance science fair."

That actually does sound pretty interesting, and might have worked if it weren't for Jaime muttering to his friend, "Oh my God, they're all a bunch of freaks and nerds. Probably from one of those 'special' camps—"

"We're not freaks!" Nina whirls around, shaking off Lo's hand and glaring fiercely. Not expecting her to stop so suddenly, Jordan and Faris run right into them, and then Geia and Una stumble into them, bringing half the tour group to a confused halt.

"What on earth is going on back here?" Addison's voice is half-angry and half-worried as he and one of the unLettered chaperones, a middle-aged woman with a ponytail, make their way to the knot.

"Well, I wasn't baitin' him, Addy!" Jordan says immediately, but Nina interrupts, her cheeks pink and chest swelled with indignation.

"We were all listening, Addison—J was just trying to engage in a perfectly civil discourse with this unLe—this kid from the Out—from the other school, and he started making completely unprovoked slanderous diatribes about some of our kids," she states, pointing accusingly at Jaime like a lawyer before the judge.

"I did what?" says the Outsider kid, and the Outsider chaperone is giving N an odd look.

"I'm sure there was no harm intended," Addison says.

"Well—that kid was calling us names in French or something!" pipes up Jaime's friend, pointing at Lazlo.

"It was Spanish, actually," Lazlo says, staring back at his accuser with flat dislike.

"Same difference—"

"That's enough, now, Henry," starts the chaperone tentatively.

"This argument is over. If you all need to be separated, that can be arranged," says Addison firmly. Glancing over the House kids, he goes on, "Don't forget what we talked about earlier. Keep moving, guys, we're holding up the tour."

"Yes, Addison," they grumble, and begin to follow after the librarian. From the corner of her eye, Una sees Jaime pulling a face at them.

"Freaks."

"Don't call names, Jaime," says the chaperone, looking a little cross. Una wonders with a hint of smugness if she's jealous of the way Addison so easily took control of the situation. "Kira's going to get you if you don't behave."

"Really, lady?" Lazlo and Faris both make to clap their hands over Nina's mouth, but she brushes them off and actually starts heading back toward the Outsiders. "No wonder they're such a bunch of screw-ups, with someone like you tellin' them lese like that! How misguided you gotta be to use the worst mass murderer the world ever seen as a cheap threat? Who you gonna sic on him next, Hitler? What kinda—"

Oh, oh dear. This is not good, even actually bad, even actually terrible, Una can see, and she clings to Geia in a frail attempt to hold her back as she starts back toward the stupid lady too. Nina's shouting has fired up Jordan again, and the others are starting to pay attention, and it's the shy ones holding back the confrontational ones though they're all incensed that this Outsider would dare use the name of L and Mr. W's killer in such a shallow, inconsequential way.

It all gets sorted out eventually. Between Addison, all of the aides, all of the unLettered chaperones, and a few museum security personnel, it gets sorted out.

After that the museum people are suddenly able to make accommodations for them to go on a private tour in the afternoon. It's funny how these things work, Una thinks, and goes back to pretending the Outsiders aren't there.

Chapter 47: Grudge

Making friends has never been a skill of hers, though Isabel has tried—she's tried so hard to make people like her. The foster brothers and sisters at her last home couldn't stand her (whatever, she didn't like them either, the stuck-up rats), and the same at the one before that, and the one before that. This place seems different than all of those places, though, and she's determined to make a fresh start, no matter what she has to do. And the sleepy girl with the frizzy hair seems as good a start as any. One person alone is always an easier and less threatening target than a crowd.

The new girl has no way of knowing Qarri is probably the worst target in the room right now. She was up until three in the morning working on a program that would simply not compile, no matter what she did. Driven to exhausted desperation, she'd finally consulted Echo, who didn't really know the program but at least had a fresh set of eyes. Only after she'd promised E an extra month of listening in on her bugs did she finally realize that she had misspelled a function name in a critical line of code. Tired and irritated, she'd dragged herself down to breakfast to discover that it was porridge day. Qarri despises porridge almost as much as she hates giving away free favors and losing sleep. A pop quiz in her literature class and getting scolded for falling asleep in the middle of calculus did not exactly improve things, and then as if all that weren't enough, it's green beans with lunch today, and hang it all if she doesn't detest green beans even more than porridge.

Echo has been decent enough to warn the other students, who studiously avoid the table where Q is glowering at her plate in a way that suggests she is making an earnest attempt to set it on fire with the power of her mind.

However, Isabel just arrived—literally just got moved in last night, and hasn't even started classes yet. She doesn't know not to bother Qarri when she's in this mood, and nobody thought to tell her. All she knows is that she doesn't know anyone and there's a girl about her age sitting by herself at the last table in the dining hall. So she plunks her own plate right down across from her and pins a big, friendly smile to her face.

"Hi!"

Isabel's smile falters a little as the other girl looks up from her green beans with an expression caught somewhere between What the hell sort of backward planet do YOU come from? and Just because my plate isn't catching fire doesn't mean it won't work on your face.

"My name's Isabel," she forges on, stretching her fake smile a little wider in hopes that it will impress her goodwill upon this odd girl, and she'll stop scowling like that. "What's yours?

At that, the other girl's black brows twitch up into a disdainful arch. "Letter," she grunts.

"…I beg your pardon?" She has heard one or two aliases already that don't sound like regular names, it's true—'Gao' she concedes sounds sort of foreign, and might be normal in like, Asia or something, but come on, 'Over' and 'Near'? What kind of weirdo has a preposition for a name? All the same, 'Letter' seems like an even dumber name.

"This the House, fishie. You don' got a name no more. Got a letter. I for Isabel."

"Well—that's still a name," Isabel retorts, a little stung. "Just because we use the initials too doesn't mean 'Isabel' isn't a name. That's completely superficial nomenclature."

Now the other girl is looking at her with a very familiar expression, one that says, I don't think I like you very much. So Isabel quickly backtracks, "Whatever though. So what's your letter, then?"

"Q for Qarri."

"Well wait a minute. How does that work?" Now it's Isabel's eyebrows that jump disdainfully. "Carrie starts with a C, not a Q."

And dammit, she's doing it again. Now with an expression of pronounced annoyance, Q for Qarri dismisses her and turns her attention back to her plate, muttering something under her breath that isn't quite audible but sure doesn't sound like, "Good point! Let's be best friends anyway!"

Picking at her beans awkwardly, Isabel goes for another tack. "So…Q, huh? Guess that means you've been here for a while."

Qarri makes a sound that could be an affirmative.

"Do you like it here?"

"What not to like?" Q asks aggressively, as though Isabel is suggesting there is something.

"I didn't mean it like that, I just figured it must have been hard to get used to," Isabel retorts.

"And why would that be?"

It's the same as it always is. For some reason, even though Isabel is clearly aware that she's digging herself into a hole, she has to just keep digging. "Well—I mean you're obviously not a native English speaker—"

"DUI A?" Slanted eyes wide and livid, Qarri throws her fork down to her plate. "Ok, listen up, blakaba fishie. You obvo don' know ten beans about how thing work 'round here. No names! No talkin' 'bout the Outside, or Before the House! You not some unLettered wormbait no more, so stop actin' like one! And for you information, I learn English before Mr. W chose me!"

"Are you girls getting along here?" interjects a young man, drawn from the table he's monitoring by Qarri's shouting.

"Yeah, just peachy, Jeremy," Q mutters, still glaring daggers at Isabel.

"I'm glad to hear it," the aide says, and goes on pointedly, "don't forget Isabel is new to the House, Qarri, and could use a hand settling in for the next few days. Maybe you can show her the ropes."

"Sound great," she says flatly. Isabel agrees more with her tone of skeptical distaste than with her actual words. This Qarri seems like just as much of a stuck-up brat as her old foster siblings. She thinks she's so great, just because she's been here at this House for a while? Well, Isabel was chosen by Mr. W too, so there.

"Great. Now be nice," says Jeremy, and hurries on to the next table, where a pair of boys are using their spoons as catapults to sling grapes at each other.

"Hnn. You been oriented yet, fi—Isabel?" Qarri says, sounding rather as though the words are being pried from her about as willingly as if it were her teeth being pulled out.

"If you mean a couple kids sneaking into my room in the middle of the night and telling me how weird this place is, then yeah," Isabel says coolly. Q clearly doesn't like her, so she's decided she doesn't much like her either. So there.

Q's eye actually twitches a little, something Isabel has read about in novels but never actually seen someone do. "So, what, you think you too good for the House?"

"Well, it's ok I guess," Isabel says, and then it happens. She doesn't really mean for it to, but this girl is irritating her so much with her uppity attitude, and Isabel hates people looking down on her. She opens her mouth and what comes out is, "I probably won't stay long. My daddy said he'd come get me if I didn't like it, and he'd send me to a better school."

It never works, it sometimes works, it never works for long, and Isabel curses herself for already messing up her clean slate here, but it's become so ingrained it's like—she doesn't know what it's like. She has to say something that's not the truth. Mommy can't come because she's at work. No, I just fell down the stairs, it was an accident.

"Liar."

"Am not," snaps Isabel. "My daddy's rich, he can send me to any school I want. If I call him and say I don't like it here he'll send a helicopter for me within half an hour!"

Qarri scoffs disgustedly. "If you had a daddy alive and not in jail or the crazy house, you wouldn't be here. That not even a good lie. Maybe you should make that call, I don' think you smart enough to be here. Mr. W prolly just felt sorry for you!"

"It's not a lie!"

Her daddy is in jail, as a matter of fact, and so is her mom and her brothers, all for different things, and she hopes they never never ever get out, but this brat has no right, no right to judge her by her family or where she's come from, no right at all! "What do you know about anything?" Isabel snarls, pasted smile long discarded. "I bet you were just stupid alley trash before Mr. W scraped you off the street! You act so smart, cuz you're just jealous—"

"Oh, da, jealous of dis lying fishie wormbait, think you bum smell like roses? You don' got a chance here, princess, you gonna get scrubbed in a week!"

"Girls!"

"What?" Isabel snaps back, then cringes back when she sees that the person she's snapping at is Matron Marta.

"Perhaps you two should not sit together," the matron says grimly.

Chapter 48: Usurper

Fallon is on a high today. Nothing can bring him down when he's flying, or swimming. Flying through water. Yeah, that works. Slamming his foot to the wall of the pool and thrusting off again, F slices through the water like a friggin' dolphin. Or a shark. A dolphin-shark that could own all the other dolphins and sharks in one giant oceanic race-a-palooza. King of the Sea!

He explodes from the surface at the end of the lap to slap his hand down on the floor, and the swim teacher halts the stopwatch.

"Faster by three seconds," his teacher says with a grin.

"That's right! Ha, that's what I'm talking about!" Fallon crows, and throws himself backward into the pool with a colossal splash. The impact stings, but it's the sting of victory! Kings of the Sea don't feel pain!

"Good work, F. Why don't we call it a day?"

"Kings of the Sea don't take breaks!" F yells enthusiastically, leaping out of the water and crashing in again.

"Maybe not, but Kings of the Sea still have to do their sociology homework," points out the teacher good-humoredly as soon as he breaks the surface.

"True! Kings of the Sea also rule at sociology! That is why we make such great Kings!"

"Alright, come on out then," the teacher laughs.

As soon as he gets back to his room to put away his swim goggles and grab some clothes to change into Fallon notices he's got Housemail. A brief glance proves it to be from Dex.

"Sorry, Kings of the Sea don't waste their time reading messages from pompous nerds before showering," Fallon tells his computer, scoffing a little and snagging a clean towel from his dresser.

Obviously it's still there when he gets back, but not a priority. He towels off his hair, flips through the assignment sheet for this week's sociology paper, and glances through a few of the recommended resources the professor has listed.

It doesn't seem complicated, and so he's got plenty of spare brain power to wonder while he's at it what D might be bugging him about now. (He could just look, but that's not as fun as analyzing and predicting and seeing if he's right.) A couple years ago he might have expected it to be some boring sly remark about the succession, or else an even more boring message about keeping quiet because other people are studying or to stop teasing Kae or whatever. Since the whole—well—fiasco with A and B, though, Dex has actually been pretty good about not being such a bossy jerk.

Well, Fallon temporizes—because he's in a great mood and he's inclined to be generous even to pompous nerds when he's cheerful—just in general D has been more…withdrawn. It sucked a lot for all of them (though, F thinks privately, getting rid of B was the gold medal of all silver linings), but Dex really took it personally, blaming himself for the whole crazy thing. Of course, F would be the first to leap up and point out that that in itself is something of an indicator of Dex's own self-importance, but at the same time the experience certainly took him down a few notches, and he's a lot more bearable these days. And really, with his pompousness toned down, F thinks D can actually be a really good leader.

Just not a good L. That'll be his place.

At this F thinks he's put off reading the message long enough for it to seem like it's not that important without it being so long that it seems like he's deliberately avoiding it, so he opens up the email and reads it.

F,
you see the scores posted for the crimpsyc test yet? if not I rec looking
D

Criminal psychology scores? Maybe Fallon was wrong, and Dex has somehow regained all his old buggerliness and is back to snidely pointing out every time he gets a better grade. He sits back a little, laughing to himself. Well, that's too bad. Oh well. So he got a few points higher, so what? They wrestle back and forth in their percentages all the time.

"That's ok, D, King of the Sea will take you down tomorrow," he tells the computer cheerfully, but even as he's deleting the message, a new one from pops up from Gao. The subject line reads HAHAHAHA. Grinning a little in expectation of some new joke or prank, he pulls it up.

GO CHECK CPSYC SCORES. NOOOOOW

Hmm. Well, maybe he should go take a look. Honestly the only thing that Fallon can think of that could possibly have Dex sounding slightly concerned and Gao in stitches about criminal psychology would be if little Lin pulled out a miracle and took the top score, but he can't imagine how that would be possible unless he and D both coincidentally had a couple pages of the test stuck together or something and missed a few questions.

The moment he steps out into the hall G practically pounces, face shining with deranged glee. "Come on, hurry it," the younger boy says urgently. His slanted eyes glint. "I cannot wait to see you expression."

Gao gets exactly what he is hoping for.

"WHAT?" Fallon roars when he sees the list posted on the professor's door, as Gao sags against the wall holding his stomach and shrieking with hysterical hyena laughter. "THAT'S IMPOSSIBLE! HE PRACTICALLY A FETUS!"

"Lil' M thrashed you both good," G chokes through his laughter.

"BEGINNER'S LUCK!" he screams at the other boy, not at all sharing in his amusement. Criminal psychology is his subject! He gets thrashed all the time in math and sciences, and how could he not be? Concord practically is a computer, Icarus and Hopper live and breathe physics, Jitter speaks calculus better than he speaks English, and Kae—well—she gets lucky sometimes. But Fallon completely destroys everyone except Dex in this arena. In L's arena. This is a fight for the giants. David doesn't beat Goliath in this story. Goliath stomps him and uses him for a gel insole in his favorite stomping shoes!

Kings of the Sea do NOT get bested by little punk-ass eight-year-old guppies like Mello!

The storm rushes him to Dex's room, hurricane winds tearing paintings down from the walls and peeling the paint. He doesn't even get the pleasure of trying to knock down the door, because D hears him coming and opens it.

"I gather you seen it by now," the older boy says evenly. He's clearly trying to appear flippant, but the firm set of his mouth and the white-knuckled grip he has on the edge of the door sort of ruin it.

"WHO DOES HE THINK HE IS?" Fallon howls.

"Competition, I imagine," Dex answers. His non-frown ratchets a couple notches tighter. "It could just be a fluke."

"Are you guys talkin' 'bout M bestin' you on the crim psyc test?" pipes Linda's little voice, peeping around her door across the hall.

"Yep," laughs Gao breathlessly, just catching up to them.

"IT WAS A FLUKE!" F shouts at her, clenching his fists in indignant rage. Blanching, Linda ducks back into the shadow of her door.

"There no point barking at her for it," says Dex, swiveling around to stand between them and facing down Fallon's impending-typhoon expression. "Get a grip."

Having D tell him to cool it does exactly nothing to calm him down, but just as Fallon is building up to let loose on his competitor, the other boy clears his throat uncomfortably and says in a more conciliatory tone, "Anyway, I uh…I got a copy of his test answers. So. You know. If you want to take a look. You can."

As suddenly as it blew up, his anger implodes, collapsing around his ears like a demolished building. Kings of the Sea don't need favors, but he actually is dying to see what on earth that infant did that convinced the professor to actually score him above Dex and Fallon, and it's like he's been dragged down to his knees in chains. This is humiliating.

"No," he mumbles, running a hand through his shaggy hair and turning away, back toward his own room. "It's…whatever."

"It not the end of the world, F," Lin says tentatively from her doorway, as Gao quickly interjects, "Well, I wanna see it!"

"Look, F," D says, and it's his tone that makes Fallon pause, because Dex was defeated too, and he's also angry, and he's reaching out as an indignant equal to join against a new threat from below. "I know we never—I know we get on each other's nerves—"

"HA!" Gao barks out, stifling his laughter to a muffled giggle as both of the older boys give him a sour look.

"There are always gonna be new students, and some of them might be real challengers," Dex goes on, sounding as though he doesn't particularly appreciate having to sacrifice his pride to say so. "We may have something to gain from analyzing M's test together. Give each other a new perspective to meet a new challenge."

He's altogether too much the politician, and Fallon almost can't stand him for it, but he's also right.

"Oh, fine then," he sighs.

Chapter 49: Dare

Notes:

CW: mentions of attempted suicide.

"I not sayin' it true, that just what Gao told me," Geia murmurs, raven-haired head bent over their digital workstation, rearranging the flowchart on the table screen with her stylus.

Hunter scoffs. "That alone enough to discredit it," he points out.

"Dui a, he just tryin'a scare you," says Echo, eyes following G's stylus. "Prolly hope if you more stressed you gonna buy more smoke off him."

"Ha!" Jordan barks, "Finals not bad enough, gotta bring spooks int'it?" With a gusty sigh, he drops his elbows on the edge of the table screen.

"J!" Geia gasps, as the contact makes her flowchart twist out of shape.

"Sorry!"

"Keep you drama on you side," she mutters to herself, dragging the boxes back into place with her fingers. "Anyhow. I surprised you haven't heard that before."

"I heard it," Hunter says defensively. "I just don' believe in ghosts. Show me evidence instead of some cricketty story that big G try to feed us and maybe I actually think about it."

"I surprised to hear that, Tinfoil, I thought you into stuff like that," Echo teases.

"Will you stop it with the stupid nickname? That was years ago," H says, scowling. "Look, G, you can do all that arranging automatically—"

"I know. I like doing it myself. Stop it." Frowning, she swats his hands away.

"Well, it takin' forever—"

"Wouldn't take forever if you'd stop messin' it up, Tinfoil."

"Now you got her on it too," Hunter snaps, turning irritably on Echo, who shrugs.

"Anyway though," E says, "I don' think there a curse and I don' think there ghosts either, and if me and H actually agree on something, we can't possibly be wrong. If this place haunted, why there's not some crazy intense paranormal investigation goin' on?"

"You kiddin', right?" Now it's J who's laughing. "Crusties and brass wouldn't ever let anyone. Even Gao make little jokes, but he got pissed when R and O tried to set up those mics and e-mag detectors in—" his voice drops several decibels, to what would almost be a normal speaking level for anyone else, "—in B's old room."

"Shhh!" Hunter and Geia shush him simultaneously, looking around paranoidly as though someone might be listening in. Which, in the House, is always a strong probability.

"See what I mean?" says Jordan, throwing up his hands.

"Yes, fine, we see what you mean," snaps H quietly, "Now stop talking about it, let's focus on this assignment."

"You awful skitty about it seein' as you don' even believe in the ghosts," Geia comments, brows rising under her thick black hair. "And you want proof, what about Beck, hm? He was fine before he said he saw that—"

"Let's not talk about that," Echo interrupts, suddenly very interested in the table screen, restraining a shiver. Beckon was not exactly a friend of hers, but it still makes her sick to her stomach, remembering—opening the door, only knocking after—not seeing him at his desk, thinking he must be in the library—turning to go—and there he was, toes gripping the edge of the chair like he was terrified to drop and terrified to stay standing, and too surprised by her unexpected interruption to do either—

"E!"

She gasps when Jordan grabs her wrist and snatches her hand away from the table screen, where she's drawn a square and outlined it three times without realizing it.

Tap tap tap tap.

"Right," J laughs, "I can see these ghost don' bother either of you."

"I not bothered," Echo retorts, snatching her hand away. "Just wanna get on with this assignment."

"Mmhmm," G says, nodding sardonically to herself. "Both you don' believe in the ghost, dui ma? Somehow not convinced."

"So you do?" H deflects, scowling.

"I not convinced either way," Geia returns calmly. "I never seen or heard anything solid, but," she shrugs, frowning. "Passin' B's door give me the jeebles sometimes. Not 'fraid to admit that."

"Pffft! Be as superior as you want about it, you still basically admittin' you scared of a room," Hunter scoffs.

"An' besides, B didn't die," Echo points out in a whisper. "Why would his room be haunted? Don' make no sense."

"Yeah? Bet you wouldn't be so cocky if you did go in there and try to prove nothin' there." Jordan rolls his eyes until they look like they'll spin right out of his head.

"It just another room, same as any other. There nothing to prove," H says irritably.

"Fine then," says Geia, finally standing straight and looking coolly from Echo to Hunter, gesturing for them to lean in so they can hear her lowered voice. "You say you not scared, prove it. I dare you both to break in there—and stay overnight. Tonight."

"Haha, I'll back that!" Jordan crows gleefully.

"No way!" E says, repulsed, as H pulls a disgusted face.

"Ghosts is one thing, but I not so bent on provin' they not there that I gonna let her annoy me to death," Hunter declares, pointing at E, and Echo agrees whole-heartedly. Putting up with his micro-managing, bit-planning neurosis on this group history project is pushing her patience to its limits already. As if trying to manage her own OCD isn't enough! Being stuck alone with him for consecutive hours? Nuh-uh.

"So you are scared," J says smugly.

"Am not," snaps Hunter.

"Sure, whatever. All big talk so long's you don' gotta back it up, but as soon as you put up to it you cave in, yeah—"

"I'm not scared!" H bellows.

"Keep it down," Geia whispers, punching him lightly in the shoulder as other students start to look oddly in their direction.

"Fine," H hisses at Jordan, "I'll do it. I'll prove there aren't any stupid ghosts up there. Happy now?"

Bouncing a little on his heels, J turns his challenging grin on Echo.

And that's how she winds up sneaking down the hall after curfew with her blanket and pillow and physics book all rolled up in her arms, thinking dire thoughts in Jordan and Geia and Tinfoil's directions.

Being the obsessive, controlling basketcase he is, Hunter has insisted on making all the arrangements for getting into the locked room himself, leaving nothing for Echo to do but show up without getting caught. She hasn't come empty-handed, though—wrapped up in her blanket with her homework are a jammer, a bug-sweeper, and a tiny metal detector. E has no idea what made poor Beckon snap except that it sure as hell wasn't ghosts, but she wouldn't put it past either Geia or Jordan to get someone to rig up something to make she and Hunter think the place is haunted, or at least give them a good scare. She knows she'd certainly do so in their place!

"You late!" H whispers accusingly when she slips through the door—a plain door like any other door in the dormitories.

"Cool it, Tinfoil, the brass were patrollin' the floor," Echo whispers back, rolling her eyes and flicking on her flashlight as he kicks the rolled-up towel he brought back in front of the door. If any of the brass on night patrol see lights coming from B's old room—well, E has a feeling she'd be stuck with Hunter even longer, pulling weeds or scrubbing plates.

There's nothing much to say about the inside of the room. It looks just like all of their rooms—rectangular with a window across from the door and a closet on one side, a standard issue bedframe, desk, bookshelf, nightstand and dresser. The only difference is that it's empty: nothing on the shelves, no computer workstation on the desk, no mattress or covers on the bedframe.

And it's incredibly dusty.

"Careful," says H, his voice muffled through the blanket he's got pressed over his nose and mouth. "Tried'a sit down and almost had a seizure."

Echo stifles a sneeze, and finds she can completely commiserate. Grimacing, she wraps her own blanket over her face, resisting the urge to shake off the floor dust that's already gotten on its trailing corner. No doubt doing so would just kick up even more of the stuff.

"Musta been years since they clean in here," she comments.

"Yeah. I guess the brass take they superstition pretty serious," Hunter says. "No tracks or anything, 'cept dusted-over marks prolly left by R and O a couple years back."

"Which at least prolly mean no mics or buzzies."

"Prolly not. I did a sweep on the rooms on both side and came up zero."

"Well goodie." Just because Hunter checked doesn't mean Echo isn't going to double-check—sure, he knows what he's doing, but he always might have missed something. Or, if there is a prank going, he might be in on it. Gingerly, trying not to stir up more dust than is inevitable, she puts down her pillow (gross, but it's not like there's anything to clean to put it down on) and teases free her own detection gadgets.

"What, think I can't do a simple sweep?" H demands, as she starts with each corner of the room (inconspicuously finger-tapping each seam where the walls meet with her back to him so he can't see that she's doing, because she's not supposed to do it, but she just doesn't feel right until she has).

"Like you wouldn't triple-check on me?"

He doesn't have anything to say to that, though he grumbles to himself under his breath as she finishes her sweep. Sure enough, it comes up clean—not so much as a pin speaker.

With that out of the way…well…Echo takes far longer than her time packing her equipment away again, stripping the pillowcase off her pillow and putting the sensors inside so they won't get dust inside the casings. On the other side of the room, Hunter seems to feel similarly awkward, trying to clear a relatively dustless space for himself and arrange his blanket without dropping his flashlight. Eventually they both settle down, backs to opposite walls, E reading ahead in the chapter on photon momentum and Hunter busy with his calculator and statistics book.

To say it's uncomfortable is the understatement of, like, the time-space continuum.

For starters, it's physically uncomfortable—every once in a while one of them has to muffle a sneeze, and the dust tickles constantly at her nose and throat. Even with the blanket the floor is hard, and the room is musty and stuffy and a little too warm. Staying up late to study is second nature. She likes reading about the photoelectric effect. But Echo likes to do her studying in a certain way: a bit of a nice breeze from the window, sitting upright at her desk with her computer right there to double-check facts or research more about interesting footnotes, with plenty of light and a glass of juice and maybe some quiet piano music, if she's in the right mood. And though she studies with Crash and Wiley during the day, or other students depending on how their projects are assigned, once evening hits she likes to be alone, focused on what she's doing and able to tap corners all she wants without anyone judging her. Right now it's just about killing her, looking at the rectangular page of the book and feeling tenser and tenser with the urge to touch her finger quickly to each corner.

But she can't, because Hunter is staring at her.

She can feel his eyes almost like a physical pressure, although every time she glances up to catch him at it his gaze is fixed on his work, biting his lip in concentration. He's so quick she doesn't even see his head moving, though she hears him shifting and fidgeting, occasionally scratching the back of his neck. If she were Crash she'd just call him right out on it, but sitting here in the dusty dark, she's getting increasingly reluctant to break the airless silence.

"Will you stop that?" Hunter snaps, shattering it so abruptly that the air seems to crackle in her ears.

"I just sittin' here, mindin' my own business—why can't you do the same?" Echo flares.

"I'm tryin' but I can't concentrate with you starin' at me like that!"

"Me? Look who talkin'!"

Tossing her a last dirty look, Hunter whips around on his blanket so his back is to her.

Crazy nutter. Pulling a face at the back of his head, Echo slumps down the wall so that she can't see him anymore over her knees and propped-up book. Is he trying to make her self-conscious on purpose?

And for some reason, of all the things to randomly pop up in her head, she wonders if there were any signs that Beckon was starting to lose it that they all simply overlooked.

She didn't know the boy all that well. He was quiet, and hard to talk to, given that he would usually forget he was talking to you in the middle of a sentence. Beckon found awesome new music for her to listen to and Echo updated his computer firewall every other month or so against House hacks. Other than that and occasionally debating in history and literature classes, she didn't have much to do with him. Would she have even noticed if he were acting differently?

And what about Hunter? He seems to be acting uncharacteristically nervous to Echo right now, but maybe he's just edgy for the same reasons she is. Then again maybe not. If she didn't know Beckon was slipping off the edge—how would she know if Hunter, or anyone else, might do the same any day?

That feeling of being watched is back. She resists the urge to tap out the corners of a square diagram on the page. Instead, scowling, Echo eases up a little to peek accusingly at the staring creep over her book.

Hunter's back is still to her, hunched over his flashlit statistics homework. He's not looking at her.

Despite that, the staring feeling is still there.

Huffing to herself, Echo slumps down again. She doesn't care what Gao and Geia and Jordan say—there's no such thing as ghosts. She's just imagining things and getting all worked up for no reason. Knowing that isn't calming her down, though. Even if Beckon was just imagining things, he still tried to hang himself in the end, didn't he? Never mind Hunter, what if she's starting to lose it?

This is ridiculous.

"I'm going to sleep," she announces, her voice feeling unnaturally loud, though she's barely speaking above a murmur.

"Um…'k." Hunter looks as though he might say something else, but it must just be a trick of the dim light, or else he changes his mind, because instead he turns back around.

Curling up on her side with her back to the wall, Echo has no expectation that she'll actually be able to sleep. She can't breathe properly and her shoulder and hipbone hurt already from pressing into the floor and she doesn't usually sleep this early and Hunter's very existence and his stupid determination to prove he's not a wuss getting her stuck in this stupid dare are pissing her off because she could be in her room studying, and just as she's thinking about sitting back up and studying some more she drifts off.

The next instant she's struggling awake, heart pounding in panic, with a hand pinning down her shoulder and another clamped over her mouth.

"Shhh! It ok, you fine, just shush up!" H is hissing, then cries out in pain when she bites his hand, scrambling away and knocking her head into the wall.

"Ow!"

"Chill out, you crazed harpy!" Hunter whispers shrilly, clutching his hand and examining it with his flashlight.

"What—what the hell—"

Echo doesn't feel at all well, though she doesn't feel quite sick either—she's disoriented and disjointed, and now her head hurts, and she wants H to get away.

"You sleep for a while then start…uh," Hunter clears his throat awkwardly, "you were cryin', in you sleep…so I try to wake you up and you just flipped."

"I was not," she says defensively, rubbing her throbbing head (she's pretty sure a lump is forming already) and attempting to collect herself.

"Were too," H snaps, and goes back to nursing his bitten hand. "Jeez. You lucky you didn't draw blood—good thing we all got our shots—"

"Shut up, just—shut up, Tinfoil," Echo hisses back at him, stirring up a cloud of choking dust as she practically jumps to her feet and strides across the room to the window. She's angry to find that her cheeks are indeed wet, and her eyes feel raw and achey. It's so close in here, and the watching is somehow worse, and she can't remember what she was dreaming about just now except that it made her stomach turn with dread and tar-sticky apprehension.

"It stuck. Won't open," H says behind her, muted, as she struggles with the window latch. It seems like there's not moonlight coming in at all, but she can just barely see the shiny streaks in the dust on the windowsill where someone else's desperate fingers apparently tried to do the same thing not so very long ago.

She has to get a grip, Echo thinks dimly, she's a logical, reasonable person of sound mind and there is absolutely no logical, reasonable excuse for the way she's letting a stupid nightmare that she can't even remember and all this stupid dust and this stupid room get to her.

"You were having a nightmare, huh?"

"Obviously," she bites out, turning sharply away from the window and brushing by him again to sit back down against the wall.

"Gonna try and study some more?"

Echo is about to snarl at him, but there's an anxious sort of tilt in the way he's not quite looking at her, and the wells the flashlight carves under his eyes. A sudden suspicion sneaks into her mind. "…Have you been up studying this whole time?"

"Tried to sleep for a bit…but uh…just not tired I guess."

"You were havin' nightmares too."

"Well, it not surprising," Hunter says defensively, reasoning, "We—I mean, we both know we both have OCD. It just bein' off our normal schedule and patterns throwin' us off. That's all."

"Yeah," Echo says. Normally she would get a kick out of calling H's bluff, but here in the choking dark, feeling shaken and unsettled, E gladly seizes on the excuse. "Not that tired anyway. And sure don' hurt to get a bit more readin' in."

"Yeah. Yeah, you right."

The last few hours of the night are spent huddled against the same wall, pretending to work and checking the time often and determinedly not commenting whenever the other jumps or twitches or suddenly looks around as though to catch an invisible watcher. The brush of grey predawn through the window is the most beautiful thing Echo has ever seen.

"Well. I still not convinced of ghosts," Hunter mutters as they gather up their dust-smeared blankets.

"No," Echo agrees, then says pointedly, glancing at him sidelong, "Don' know when you woulda seen one anyway, seem to me like you crashed pretty hard all night."

It's probably the first time in their lives Hunter has ever had cause to give her a grateful look. "Sure did," he says. "Seem like you did too."

"Like a log."

"Won't say anything if you don't."

"You got you a deal, H."

Chapter 50: Janiceps

[One form of conjoined] twinning is characterized by the [frontal] union of the upper half of the body…The anomaly is occasionally known as janiceps , named after the 2-faced Roman god Janus. The prognosis is extremely poor because surgical separation is not an option, as a single brain and heart are present….'

---

There are a thousand reasons for Mello to leave the House.

For starters, he's sick of it: the House, papers, books, exams, late nights in the library, all of it.

For years he's worked himself down to the bone, obsessing sleeplessly day and night. Reading, rereading, memorizing. Drilling himself relentlessly to internalize the vagaries and loopholes of laws and cases and psychological diagnoses. Since the age of eight Mello has poured his heart and mind and every ounce of effort he could muster into studying, hoping against hope that he could somehow edge his grades to the top: first successfully over Dex and Fallon's, then hopelessly, uselessly over Near's, and, failing that, succeed in cheating the House system—somehow get L himself to notice him, see how hard he's working, that he's willing to do anything to reach that goal.

And what has he achieved?

Nothing.

The first leads into the second. With L gone and the succession in Roger's hands, that's the end of it. His slim chance is gone. For all of his cheap pretenses at being even-handed, Roger always favors Near over him. No matter what anyone claims they'll all know that it's really Near in charge.

Third, he's finally accepting the unavoidable fact that here just as everywhere else, he's unwanted. Everyone in this House hates him as much as he hates them.

No, that's not entirely true. Near bears a grudge against him, is aggravated by him, but doesn't hate him. Near wants him to stay. But Near wants him under control, caught helpless under his thumb. Near wants him to stay so he'll be conveniently available—wants Mello to remain in his place alongside the scissors and paintbrushes and craft knives and all of his other tools. He actually wishes his Twin (God, how he loathes that nickname!) did hate him back equally, shoving back and attacking just as viciously when Mello lashes out at him, instead of what he does do—lying in wait then entrapping him with his own impulsive actions and effectively putting him in a headlock, all the while barely lifting a finger.

And that's the biggest reason of all. Mello is leaving because it's a brass-knuckled punch in that brat's face. When he's gone, Near will be sorry, oh yes, Mello is well aware that Near is far more terrified of being left behind than any other revenge he could imagine, however creative or excruciating. Mello fancies he knows Near better than that arrogant sot knows himself.

And if Mello is the one that's hurting right now—well, that's only natural, isn't it? You can't hit someone that hard without bruising your own knuckles and besides there are a million other things to be upset about so it has nothing nothing nothing to do with Near. Mr. W is dead, L is dead—the two people he most admired, the one who saved him from his old terrible life and the one who promised hope for a new life of the respect and power he deserves. It's just now occurred to him that he never said goodbye to Matt and that in failing to do so he's probably jeopardized his connection to his only potential ally, he doesn't know where he's going to sleep tonight, it's too cold out for the light jacket he grabbed before leaving most of his things behind and he's just missed the train for London by five measly minutes and oh God, Kira beat L, Kira beat L, that mass-murdering lowlife scum beat L.

So no, not one speck of it has anything to do with leaving Near behind—Near, who has always been there, friend and brother then enemy and brother for almost as long as he can remember, who he can barely imagine life without. But he's thinking of it entirely the wrong way, and corrects himself viciously. Like Esau kicking his way free of Jacob's parasitic grasp at birth Mello too is now free, and he will seize his rightful inheritance to spite the powers that favor the younger, wrestling angels and blind fathers be damned.

He's drawn up his hood so the ticket seller won't see the tears pouring down his cheeks. Shivering and burning and angry and shattered, Mello waits on the hard, uncomfortable bench at the train station with his backpack clenched between his knees and tries to stem the flood of everything scarlet and icy and poisonous and jagged that's roaring through him with bar after bar of chocolate.

A piece or two of it has always made him feel better in the past. The restrictions of the House nutritionist and his own ferocious self-discipline have always prevented him from eating more than that at a time except on special occasions-the best and worst of days.

When he saw the cheery purple Cadbury wrappers through the plastic front of the vending machine, though, Mello burst into tears for no reason and mechanically inserted coins and punched buttons until he'd emptied it of Dairy Milk bars.

Cash is a limited resource right now and he's already starting to feel queasy but he doesn't regret it for an instant as he rips open the fourth chocolate bar, though he does slow down enough to let it melt on his tongue instead of simply stuffing it down. He'll eat as much chocolate as he wants and more, because there's no one to tell him otherwise or to look down on him—except the ticket seller, and what does that stupid wormbait know about anything? Mello snarled at the old man earlier when he tentatively asked if he was alright, and he's probably still shaking in his shoes. So he'll eat as much candy as he damn well pleases, and do whatever he damn well pleases too—he'll—he'll wear outrageous clothes, yeah, so that nobody will be able to avoid noticing him—and he'll ride a motorcycle and drive way too fast in traffic and he'll—he'll get a gun—yeah! a gun—and learn to shoot it and if anyone so much as thinks anything he doesn't like or tries to boss him around he'll shoot them in their snotty face!

His eyes are raw and hot and his mouth feels disgustingly gummy and he's sick from crying and too much chocolate, but as he works himself up Mello barely notices these things. Just wait, and he'll show everyone. He'll make that Kira slime crawl for what he did to L, and he'll prove that he can do it without a molecule of help from the House and he'll rip that title right out of Near's hands and stomp on it because it's worthless now, because L failed and he lost and he let them all down, let Mello down, and he'll show his so-called Twin that he doesn't need him any more than he needs anyone else, which is not at all.

The more upset he gets the more disjointed his thoughts become, until he honestly doesn't know who he hates most: L or Near or Roger or his father or everyone or himself. He tells himself revenge will be sweet, and cries, and eats chocolate.

Notes:

da - (Russian) yes

hao ba - (Mandarin) How's that sound?/Is that suggestion good?

Series this work belongs to:

• Part 2 of Wammy's House was Messed Up Yo