No one I've ever met in all of my years of public education has cared as much about the stupid Pacer test as Evan Drake seems to. When physical fitness testing rolls around at the end of September, as it is apt to do, he walks the walking segments so precisely that his footfall seems to herald the bell that marks a completed run across the gym, then picks up with it until, fifty running segments later, he's sprinting across the floor, just inches ahead of the athletes, puffing and grinning like this is a legitimate dominance test he's embroiled in, and not a state-mandated arbitrary test of our aerobic capacity. Some of my friends, who are sitting on the bleachers, have noticed him by now. They're probably having a discrete chuckle about the kid who's taking all this way too seriously. He sticks out like a brand of fire in a hayfield.

"He's still going," notes Megan. Her left hand falls inches from my right.

"Mhm," I say, my gaze fixed on my friends.

"I'm glad we have him," she says. "Not that the two of us aren't intimidating, but I feel as if it's nice to have some raw firepower on board." Evan completes another lap. I see my brother fall behind, and stagger to a stop in the fifties. Good on him. He's not athletic in the slightest, so I didn't expect him to get that far.

"I wouldn't underestimate Serena, either," I note.

Megan casts me the kind of smile you give someone before breaking bad news. The conversation is cut off by Evan, who walks over, gasping and panting, and slides down in between us. His partner, who may or may not exist, is nowhere in sight. He puts both hands against the wall and says, "Eighty."

"Thanks for interrupting," I tell Evan.

"You're lucky I broke you up. Both your friend groups are watching you two like the mangy, scavenging animals they are," Evan says.

"And here comes in a lone coyote to break us apart. Mangy, scavenging animal," intercedes Megan, playfully. "I should hope they're still watching. It appears that the school bad boy and local golden child Adam Rosenbloom are fighting over a bookish nerd! Truly, this is a romance for the ages. Can you think of something more enthralling?"
"Saving the world," Evan says. "With badass superpowers."

"You're both single, though." I say. Both of them shoot that same look my way, as if they're in on an inside joke I don't get yet. I'm beginning to hate it, and I move my head against the wall, trying to divert my attention from them, my brother, and my friends. I wonder if this is how Will feels when someone looks at him-- like the whole world is staring him down. Nonchalantly as I can manage, I say, "Just checking."

"Single? That depends. You free Friday?" Evan says, with a flick of double finger guns. His shoulder is a radiator. I can feel it against me like the heat of my sword, and I move a few inches away.

"Evan."

"Pretty sure we're all single. What, are you worried our romantic obligations getting in the way of our double lives?" Megan asks, with an excessive wink.

"That was... definitely my line of thought." I say, and Megan's eyes are shining beneath her glasses, giving me a look that can only say Nice save.

"Obligations are not a problem." Evan remarks, crossing his arms. "I'll have you know I don't even have any friends."

"Evan," Megan says, this time. Her eyes are nearly wide enough to fill her glasses.

"Dude," I agree.

Evan interjects, "It's a joke." He gets to his feet, where everyone else is already filing into a line. Somehow we've been distracted by this conversation long enough to miss our teachers asking us to get in line for audio and visual testing. It's always nice to know the county cares about our health. Megan is still up against the wall, slack-jawed, glassy-eyed, apt to lose us our place in line if she doesn't snap out of it.

"Megan?" asks Evan. He leans down to her level. "Megan, are you coming?"
Megan twitches. "I'm getting a message from Anthem."

"Now?" I ask.

She nods desperately. "She's traced the signal back to a house in the suburbs, and it seems to be multiplying there. If we could get out there, we could handle this-- or at least get a sense of what we're up against. Shoot--"

I help her get to her feet. She's still gripping her head, but the wooziness is subsiding. She leans on me a little too hard. She weighs about as much as a bird, hollow bones and all, so it's no bother, but it's a little needlessly dramatic for gym class. She must get this, because she stumbles back up, still rubbing her head. "Anthem doesn't get volume yet, does she?" I ask.

Megan shakes her head, almost stumbling into one of the spreading cracks in reality that fractures the gymnasium floor. Evan catches her a step away from it, almost dropping her as Will walks over, a hopeful smile across his face.

"What's that about music?" asks Will, standing just to the side of one of the cracks on the ground. I envy his innocence.

"Nothing," I say. "We're not talking about anything."

"Really," Will says. "Me too. Can I join?"

"No," I say. "It's... an English project."
"Huh. Why's Evan Drake here?"

Evan snarks back, "I don't know. Why are you here, Will?"

Will casts a sidelong glance at me, to prove the self-evidence of this statement. "You guys have Ms. Adana too, right? Do you know what we're even supposed to be doing?"

Megan and I have not even thought about the encroaching project. We've been occupied primarily with a revolution in how we view the universe and our place in it. This would tend to place itself neatly above any concerns I may or may not have about English. I just shake my head.

Will continues, "I don't understand that woman. You would have thought that teachers would have caught on now that making projects 'innovative' doesn't make them immersive, it just makes it harder to apply the cookie-cutter skills that the school system has already drilled into our head to the task."

"Maybe that's the point," I say. The silence between us stretches and pulls taut. Finally, I ask, "Don't you have the Naval Brigade to bother?"

"You're right," Will says. "Sorry, I almost forgot that we're not brothers during school hours. Megan, your friends are over there, if you want to join us." He stalks away, arms crossed (what are you, Will, eight years old?) and we're still standing there.

"That was suspicious," Megan notes. I guess we're not justifying our actions to ourselves, either. I can roll with that.

"Siblings," I say.

Megan's gaze is melancholy. "If you think your brother's bad, you should see the look Amanda's giving me. I'm pretty sure she thinks I've been placed by a robot facsimile."

"No kidding," I say. "You have to be the most interesting robot I've ever met."

"We get it, we get it. Now. Mission?" asks Evan.

Megan bites her lip. "She wants us to leave school. I um-- I can talk to Anthem about--" She blinks. "Oh my, that's definitely a no."

I nod. "Whatever. Let's go." The three of us eye the door. There are way too many kids here for the teachers to 'keep a handle on us', so we're unhandled within minutes. There's something intensely liberating about being out here, and I can feel the stone buzzing with heat in my hand. It always finds its way back there if I don't have pockets. Megan curls her hand tighter, and Evan braces himself to jump. It takes surprisingly long for common sense to set back in. "Wait. Should we have a cover?"

"'I've got it. Megan. You're going to be Adam's mom for a hot second," says Evan, passing Megan his flip phone, which has been conveniently located in the pockets of his definitely-not-gym-pants. I didn't know that people still owned flip phones. I would have been less impressed if he'd given Megan a small dinosaur. "Guess who has a doctor's appointment?"

"Well, that's Freudian," I say as Megan opens the flip phone. She looks about as thrilled about this plan as I do. "Evan, you're not going to need an alibi?"

Evan smirks. "I go to Science once a week. They'll be surprised if I do show up. Now, Adam, we probably need a second phone, but if you can just call in for Megan--"

Amanda asks, "Hey, Meg, where are you headed?"

Well. That's unfortunate.

Megan casts us this look, and I'm definite that only Evan gets it. Still, the two of them seem to have come to some conclusion, without me, in a number of seconds, and then Megan's walking towards Amanda, looking for all the world like a normal teenager, which everyone here knows she isn't. "Just let me explain everything, Amanda," Megan says with a smile. With her eyes, she says: Around the corner. Go.

At least I got that one.

Evan pushes me towards the men's locker room, but the door is a slick pane of darkness. We fall through into the abyss, resurfacing in the Veins, and he's in his costume. My mind immediately connects the dots, this time, which is an improvement, but I can still tell there's an unnerving difference in the way he moves in costume, a sort of effort beneath each movement that makes him seem less frenetic and stifled. "Well, that was a pain in the ass," he says, practically kicking down Anthem's nice double doors. "Freaking hate the Delegation girls. Can you think of anyone with their head stuck further up their ass?"

Anthem, who is inside on one of the chairs, immobile as a taxidermied animal, moves only her eyes as her gaze turns upon us. Her mouth twitches open to reveal those perfect white sabers. "You've come," she announces to the pair of us. "Poor turnout. Unsurprising, but nonetheless disappointing. Turn around. It is a small house close to the woods. You are to infiltrate it for as long as possible. I can not get you terribly close, due to the interference from the other shard, but I will make my best attempt to get you into a secure place."

"Do we need the costumes? I feel like it might be a bit hard to blend in suburbia," I say.

Anthem narrows her eyes. "You are going to want the powers. The most important of those powers, that being your protection from the vision of other people, will be critical, especially in later stages of the mission."

"I didn't realize we got invisibility," Evan says.

"They will see you. They will not know you. It is one of the most difficult magics I have wrought with the Diosite," Anthem explains. Her gaze settles blank. "You are free to leave. I will be in communications through Adam."

Evan smirks. "Guess you're Anthem's lead pawn, now." I roll my eyes as hard as I physically can as we approach the door, which has become another portal. Heaven forbid we go through a door normally. Evan fake-bows deep as possible. "After you, good sir."

I go first, but he comes after me so quickly that we might as well have stepped through at the same time. We're back out in the sunlight, which reflects how ridiculous our get-up really is. Evan's dark uniform could not possibly draw any less attention, and up against the trees where we've been dropped, he looks almost alien. Maybe he just looks like a dumb kid playing dress-up in the woods. "We probably look terrible," I declare.

He nods. "Plan?"

I close my eyes to focus, and see a dark red aura behind my closed eyes, coming from a ways off. It's straight ahead.

"It's straight ahead," I echo. "Damnit!"

"What?" asks Evan. "Is it guarded?"
"No, I just-- Anthem," I try to explain. I fold my arms. "Never mind. If something happens, by the way, I want you to be the first line of offense. It's going to take me too long to get the sword out of its sheath."

Evan nods, again. "Right on, Chief."

"Are we going with that?"

Evan smiles. "Oh, you didn't have a name planned? I like Chief. It seems like something you'd come up with."

"Practical?"

"Boring."
"I'm guessing yours is just that much better, then," I say.

"Onyx," he announces. "Cool as hell."

Nope, I think, but I think even Anthem is frustrated by the fact that I adamantly (pun fully intended) refuse to be any fun. Regardless, I give the man a quick, "Nice," the kind you give when you're trying not to break someone's heart with your indifference, and follow him between the trees. The forest seems to wind on forever. "How far off is this thing?"

"I live on the edge of the woods. We'll be coming up on it," Evan says.

"Don't tell me it's in your house," I say.

Evan shakes his head. "Probably the condominiums. There are a lot of young people around there. If anyone is sick and tired enough to just say 'screw it' and end the world, honestly, probably them."

"You've got a really screwed up impression of everyone, don't you," I say, incredulous.

"Sorry."

A branch cracks.

Evan pushes me out of the way. A quadrupedal robot dashes out of the brush. It's about the size of a German Shepherd, if German Shepherds had long, knifelike attachments to their heads, like unicorn horns. Thankfully, that's about all it does have, but unfortunately, it seems to be fast enough to use it effectively. I roll out of the way, which is difficult with a sword on my back, but I can fix that. While I'm grabbing for the sword, Evan readies a ball of fire between his hands.

"Shit," I yell, which was supposed to be, 'Please don't light the entire forest on fire.' My hands are numb as they go for the sword, grasping as I try to move it into a position that will save my neck, and when I draw it ready, Evan already has it in his hands. The head comes clean off, like Play-Doh, and slumps to the ground. I watch as he presses down on the still-scalding material with his shoe, smoke rising and fizzling out from the foliage, and the dark red, singular eye mounted on the 'stalk' head of the robot goes dark.

It screeches for a bit, like a dying animal, and the limbs of its detached body rustle in the grass. I sink my sword straight into its chest, and it cuts clean. The beast stops moving altogether, and I exhale, although I'm not sure I can strictly call the feeling relief.

"Wow," Evan says. "Did we just do that?"

"It'll never be that easy again," I postulate, drawing my sword up and pointing it through the trees. "But if that's all it takes, what if we just have to go in there, pluck it out, and be done with it? We can go back to our normal lives within the day."

"Megan'd be disappointed. All that lying to her friends for nothing, huh?" asks Evan.

"You sure she's not going to..." I hesitate.

Evan shakes his heads. "Definite. I know Megan Briggs."

"You don't say." The trees are letting up. There's something red in the distance, before my closed and open eyes. Each time I blink, the afterimage settles with an overlay of the color, so that I'm seeing both simultaneously. "You'll have to educate me."

"You get it," he says. He makes a gesture for me to pause, and we crouch at the edge of the woods. The houses are larger in presence than they've ever been before. I point to the third one. We stalk the perimeter like wild animals at the edge of a human campground. I can see an attic window (admittedly closed) on the back of the reddest house, and there's a little back porch we could use to get up. Of course, we'd need to leap something like ten feet to get up there. "I've got it."

"What, did you get super agility too?" I ask.

"It's based on what you want," Evan says. "Back up. I'm going to take a running start." He rushes the yard and with one defiant leap, ends up, against all odds, on the back porch's roof with the kind of thump that should really tip someone off. He bows, and I half expect the poor thing to collapse in on him. When it doesn't, he bends down, brandishing a hand, and I realize he actually wants me to move forwards. People move against the opaque windows, their silhouettes like fish, and I hold against a tree, my heart accelerating. He mouths 'Adam' from across the yard.

I run forwards, because there's nothing else I can possibly do. He grabs my hand and pulls me up, and as I settle on the roof, I hold as far against the side of the house as possible, standing against the flaking rafters. There's another window just above us.

"Give me a boost," Evan says.

"You're totally nuts," I tell him. "I just wanted to establish that before we either trespass on an innocent civilian or get killed."

I proceed to give him a boost, and then, after a small eternity of sliding and jiggling, slides the window open. I feel his weight lift from me, and then he enters. Two arms slide back down to meet me, and I am pulled, after a significant amount of heaving, into an attic. I barely fit in through the window, especially given the uniform, and the metal does not want to go over the bottom of the window. It takes an elaborate series of push-ups and rotations to move me through, which is going to be a disaster later, but with one final scrape of metal on wood, we're in.

All noise goes dead except for the slight scuffling of chips below. I can make out muted voices, and some of them sound concerned. "--the attic?"

"What? There's nothing up there."

"Are you sure?"

My heart freezes.

Red eyes light, and I find that I'm not the only metal thing in the attic. A thousand bent and broken mechanical forms illuminate, metallic limbs turning against themselves as half-formed beings attempt to rise to our level. Most of them are unfinished, to the point where they can't even get up, but most are affixed with weapons, and the red bulbs of their eyes glow in the dark. "There's nothing," promises a voice. Evan looks paralyzed with fear. "I've got a lot of garbage up there, but trust me, the door won't even open."

Evan was wrong. I was wrong. Anthem might even have been wrong. Whoever's been planning this, they've been doing so for a long time. Whatever the shard's giving them the power to do, or compelling them to do, whatever, they've been working at it.

"There's this big place out in the woods where I was planning to start going at it," says the same voice. "Holding meetings and all. I understand this all sounds ominous, if not totally insane, but what I'm planning isn't going to work here."

Evan squints at me in the darkness. A metallic imitation of a hand begins to creep towards us in the dark.

"You make it sound like a cult, Addie," laughs another voice. "We really have to go all the way out into the woods?"

"I don't like the idea of holding it here if we're opening it up to strangers," she says, as Evan crushes the hand between his own, which are red-hot and molten. I draw my sword, but Evan gestures for me to lower it. Something cold as death crawls up my back. "But this could help people. We all know someone who deserves, no-- needs this. There's this guy at my work who almost threw himself over a bridge three weeks ago. He was back in the office in two, working the same job. They can only keep you for so long. After all, what are they going to fix? The loans? The job itself? They're not going to dismantle the system to help you. They can try to boost you up, but eventually, they're going to throw you back in."

Chips spill across the table. I turn around and Evan almost soundlessly removes a robot. At this point, we're being swarmed. Being up here is like holding our breath. You can only do it so long before you have to come up for air, and whether that means making noise or leaving, we're dead as soon as we break the surface.

"You've got a good bluff," says another voice. "One more round?"
"I hate that we have to do anything at all," says the third. There are three of them, aren't there? The way their voices echo off the walls, buzz through the floors, it could be anywhere from two to five.

"Modern life necessitates distraction," says Addie. Her voice is familiar, so much lighter than the words it carries, and enthusiastic even as it seems her heart might be breaking. Another round is dealt out. The chips are placed on the table. Something moves to cover my mouth. None of the figures are armed, but I can't fight them off. "All in?"

Evan is covered in metal. The pair of us are frozen in semi-stasis, and I grab the sword, finally, but I can't even bring myself to put it near him. I go through an eye, and the noise is a sharp, startling crack. Evan wrests something long and tendrilled off his body, throwing it aside, and then we're back to back, ready for the worst to fall upon us on waves. Fire blazes between his fingers as the pair of us begin swinging robots off, and at the same time, beneath us, someone is about to come up. We can hear her footsteps.

It's just a woman. It's just a normal, everyday woman, and everything will be fine. It doesn't matter. She's vulnerable to the sword, and I wouldn't use it, but I can scare her good. Maybe she'll just turn the stone over. I can see it pulsing through her form, my second vision reaching through the floorboards, and I realize its all around her, like it is around us.

The trapdoor to the attic eases open. A dark crown rises from it, like a trident in shape, and my heart catches with pure terror. My blade moves without me thinking, and I slice through fabric.

"What do we do," I ask Evan. "She's the real thing. What do we do. What do we do?"

Evan gapes. "I don't know."

I look to the window. We have one exit. There's no way we can get through it. We are going to die, she will absolutely kill us, and the woman's face emerges, white as china and pissed as hell. Her outfit is a white dress, but all the fabric of it seems to be alive. She looks like a real supervillain. We are kids in costume.

"Hold her off," I say. "Whatever you think you have--"
"Addie, what's happening up there?" asks someone.

"Someone broke in," she says. "They look-- look, I'm taking care of it."

Evan's claws burn through white fabric as she attempts an attack, and meanwhile, I manage to get my sword around the window frame. It seems stuck there, and then it begins to burn. The knife pulls out clean, the air around it sweltering, and I drive it around the rest of the frame. "E-- Onyx!" I yell as I climb through, functioning off of pure instinct. It's much easier to get through the window when the frame isn't there, but I can't leave him. "Come on..."

Evan jumps over me, lands on the roof (tile flies everywhere), and picks me up. Given that I'm three inches taller than him and a good thirty pounds heavier than him, not counting the armor, this should not be possible, but the man carries me down from the roof and takes off at a mad sprint into the woods. We do not look back for a second until we're into the Veins (we materialize straight into Anthem's 'room' this time, and then Evan drops me. The metal clatters against the ground, and Evan holds his arms. "You are so uncomfortable," he says. "Like a porcupine."

"We're not dead," I say. "And that was... that was the real thing. I mean, that was..."

"We're not dead," he says.

Anthem looks at us both with blank eyes from her chair. "Thank you. I understand this must have been nervewracking. However, you will be pleased to know we have collected the necessary information."

"What?" I ask.

"She is further along than expected. She has already begun to share fragments of the Diosite amongst companions. It appears she has also manifested some very powerful technokinesis... troubling, but not unexpected. We will wait until she moves out into the woods to make our next move," Anthem says. "You both did well."
"I wouldn't say I feel like I did well. I'd say I feel more like I just broke into someone's house and almost got murdered by robots, but I'll take the compliment," I say, offering her a weak thumbs up.

"Yeah, I feel like shit. You want to get ice cream?" asks Evan.

"Oh, no, I don't have cash--" I begin.

"-- I'll pay."

"Also, you saved my life, not the other way around. If anything, I should be getting you something."

Evan knocks my shoulder. "It's alright. It looks like you'll have some time to make it up to me." He strides towards the exit, letting his hands rise with fire again. His eyes burn with its reflection, and I really do think he just likes looking at it. "I'll see you later, Anthem." Then he's gone.

I look back to Anthem, whose face is completely blank. "I have to go," I say, her eyes boring into mine. I disappear behind Evan, and emerge on a street in the middle of town. There's an ice cream place, locally owned, not more than a few blocks away. I'm back in my school garb, sans the backpack (guess I'll have to go back for that, great), and I have to clutch my civilian clothes to remind myself they're mine. "That was a nightmare."

"And we survived."
"You carried me out of a house."

"You pried the window open."

"I hope she's okay," I mutter.

Evan squints. "Look, I have no idea what was going on, but I get the feeling she isn't, for a variety of reasons out of our control. We'll work it out later. What's important is that we lived, we know they're plotting something, and that next time, we'll meet them in the woods and work it all out. Can we just let ourselves have a job well done?"

"I guess," I say, and mean it. "You're pretty badass, Drake." I hold up a clenched fist, and he knocks his against mine. His smile is surprisingly earnest, none of the usual snark and ill intent that usually mars his expression.

We enter the ice cream shop, dictate an order to a half-dead college student who doesn't question it (Evan smiles at me again as he orders, and surprise, the smirk is back), and some slight sense of unease steals over me.

"Something wrong?" asks Evan, sitting down with a cone of Rocky Road.

"Megan," we say at once.

"Jinx," he says, calling her. Miraculously enough, she picks up. As Evan puts on speakerphone, he yells, "Briggs!"

"Don't worry, there's a sub!" exclaims Megan. "I'm working on our project right now. I imagine you're probably not artistically inclined, Adam."

"I might be," I lie. "That's not important. You're alright? Everything went okay?"

"I should be asking you that!"

"We're alive. I'll explain the rest later," I say. "What did you tell the Naval Brigade? You didn't blow our cover, did you?"

"Well." The line goes quiet for a second. "There was a tactical RPG I used to play online. I told them that Evan Drake, of all people, had an account, and that we'd been communicating over the summer. Due to some of the issues Evan's had with our group in the past, he didn't want to get dragged into all that. Evan, I have like five alternate accounts if we need an alibi for you. Point being, site is frozen, so the two of us have been looking into other games for a while now. Also found Adam online, but he doesn't like talking about this stuff and finds the whole Naval Brigade thing really smothering. You guys don't have to say anything about the game itself, but if we're ever talking about this in public, we pass it off as part of the game. Have you heard of Etheralia Online?"

"That's some hot garbage," Evan says, thoughtfully. "Thanks, Megan, for implying I would ever play Etheralia Online."

"Sounds like hot garbage," I agree. "Keep it as far away from my real-life friends as possible, and I'll let it slide. The point is, Megan, you gave them all of that, and they bought it?"

"Yeah," Megan laughs over speakerphone. "Pretty crazy, right?"

"You came up with that on the spot," I say.

"Yes!" Megan says, again. "It's called roleplay."

"Actually, it's called lying," I say.

"I delude myself intentionally all the time," Megan responds. "We all do. I don't like lying, and I especially don't like lying to my friends, but this is a matter of our safety. If they found out--"

She trails off, and there's nothing to fill the gap. I'm thinking about Will, the way he'd have a thousand different things to propose, the way his face would light up when I told him the truth, and possibly the downcast look I'd get for lying to him for so long.

"They can't," Megan says.

"No, they can't," I agree.

She hangs up.

Evan mutters, "Etheralia Online," and shakes his head. "This is ridiculous," he says.

"Please," I say, "At least you're not lying to anyone."

Evan puts a hand on my shoulder. "You two are doing the right thing. We don't know what Anthem would do if you told. There's a good chance you can't, and that it would just deepen whatever divide you have between you and them if you tried. It's going to be okay. When all of this is over, maybe you explain everything then. For now, it's just us."

"You don't have a problem with that, do you?" I ask.

Evan tries to hide the glee sneaking over his expression. "Not really, no." He twirls the last of the dry ice cream cone between his fingers. "Hey, someone finally gave me something fun to do, and some pretty great people to do it with. What am I supposed to do, be sad about it?"

I pause. The remainder of my ice cream lies, melting, in its bowl. "That wasn't deliberate," I say. "Turning back."
"We could have died," says Evan, incredulous. "I don't want anything bad to happen to you. I don't think you're particularly keen on dying today either, are you?"
"No," I admit. I fold my arms on the table. The sugary scent of the ice cream parlor is stifling, and the clock says 2:30. If anyone cared enough to interrogate us, we could be taken in for truancy. My heart is beating, even though there's no danger, and I'm still running the events of the day through my head, threading the sequence of events through my mind and trying to settle just where it was that something changed. "What am I doing?"

Evan says, "Enjoying yourself? What, is the sensation new to you?" I can't answer. I don't want to prove him right.