#no beta im not making him read all this on a whim during a monday. that's fucken mean.

[rogueshadeaux]

Chapter Thirty-Seven — Consequences

We were there for what felt like forever. Long enough for Archie to try and take a drink of my hot chocolate, and Aunt Sia to grab both rats and return them to their cage in the living room. Long enough for Zeke to become restless and start pacing the five steps it took to span the entirety of the kitchen. Long enough for my hands to start shaking as I thought about everything.

9k words | 45min - 1 hour reading time | TRIGGER WARNINGS: Death mention, experimentation mention, illness, mass casualty, rats (?), fighting, threats, bullying.

⚠️AUTHOR'S NOTE: I cannot take credit for all of this chapter. My lovely @lobotomizedlemon wrote the beautiful speech in the end, like they knew what Jean needed to hear. Everyone needs an Aunt Sia in their life. Things move on from lore-heavy here, but Chi—thank you for trusting me with Sia. Thank you for letting me use her for something so deeply important to Erosion, and letting me hand her to Jean. She's exactly what was needed. I can't imagine this tale without her now.

Aunt Sia stood at the other end of the room, arms crossed, that cupboard full of mugs still hanging open. Brent and I were frozen mid-signage, both hands at the ready to argue further and yet absolutely no wind in our sails—mine especially. What did she mean she knew sign language? How long had she known that?!

Her arms stayed crossed as she stared at us like she caught us red-handed, Dad looking between her and us before asking, “What’s going on?”

Aunt Sia kept her gaze on us, unblinking even as I tried to shrink under her stare. “Brent,” she started, “What are you two talking about?”

Of course she’d go for Brent first. Take the weakest in the pack by the jugular, right? The man couldn’t lie, evident as Brent stumbled on his words for a moment before coming up with the best deflection ever:

“What do you mean?”

Dad suddenly became way more interested as Brent’s cheeks went red, his own eyebrows furrowed as he looked between the two of us. “Kids. What’s going on?”

Brent suddenly became very interested in the wood grain as my voice caught in my throat, eyes flitting between everyone as they all turned their attention towards me. God, why here? Why now? This was supposed to stay between me and Brent! I didn’t wanna explain everything to everyone. 

I took too long to respond. That’s what was the problem. I faltered, unable to find my voice, and prompted Aunt Sia to ask more pointedly, “What did Brent mean, ‘Tell Dad about Mom?’” she asked me directly. 

That got Dad going; his eyebrows shot up from their furrowed position, now zeroed in on me and cocking his head slightly, like a cat trying to get a reading on how far I was before it pounced. “Jean,” he said, warned, and I knew he expected nothing but the truth after saying my name. 

I swallowed thickly, trying to convince myself not to evaporate on the spot and run away while they all were confused. “I, uhm…” I drew off, voice crackling slightly. Jerry came over towards me and I grabbed the rat and held him close, using the little guy as a reason to not look up and meet anyone’s eyes. “When…before I woke up in the hospital, I…there was this thing wi-with Mom...”

And I was forced to recount it all to an audience. 

I couldn’t look up as I described it all; the long field of barley, the forest, the mines. How I followed wisps of neon thinking I was trying to find Dad. How I knew none of it made sense, but it wasn’t like a dream—I couldn’t escape no matter how hard I tried. The lack of a sun. My voice faltered when I came to the grove and I froze for so long that Jerry began biting holes in my jacket’s sleeve before I spoke of Mom. 

I could see Dad’s hand clench into a fist on the tabletop the moment I did. 

That was the reason I didn’t bring it up to him in the first place; not only did I not wanna sound like I was insane, but I wanted to keep from bringing up those memories that would turn his face ashen with pain. I couldn’t look at him as I described her. How we hugged, how she felt so real. If I did, I was sure we’d both have the same pained expression on our faces. 

When I ended my story with her using beams of neon to essentially throw me back into the real world, the room stayed tersely quiet for a moment. I hazarded a glance up; Dr. Sims was writing something down furiously on the back of one of Aunt Sia’s COLE papers, Aunt Sia was watching him as he wrote. Zeke stayed positioned by the wall, head down, not surprised but still avoiding my gaze, and Dad—

He was pissed. “And why didn’t you tell me this?” he demanded. “I thought we said no more keeping things from each other!”

“I know—” I started to defend, voice weak against his anger. That weak squeak that would have put Jerry’s noises to shame died off, though, when someone interrupted. 

“It’s my fault.”

Dad turned in his chair so he could glare at Zeke instead. “What?”

“I told Jean not to worry about the whole…deal so much,” Zeke continued, meeting Dad’s eyes without a flinch. Was he…covering for me? “When she came to me to ask if the same thing had happened to Cole and told me a bit about the…vision, I told her not to worry about it if it was the only time it’s happened. That Cole would get them if he touched tar too, and with her getting it in her bloodstream, well—’course she was in for a bad time.”

Dad seemed to have trouble processing this. “She told—” he spun his head around to look at me. “You told Zeke? But not me?”

“I didn’t want to upset you—” I started, Dad cutting me off. 

“Well, you didn’t do well, Regina.” he snapped. I flinched at how he growled my name and looked back down, throat tight. Of course he was mad! We promised each other we’d be truthful and honest and I lied to him within the same sentence. 

God, I messed up. Again. 

“You should have told us right away,” Dr. Sims chastised—not as passionately as Dad, but still disappointed. I could hear him turn slightly and he added, “You too, Zeke. If I’m going to make sure Jean’s okay, I need to know everything.”

I could hear Dad sigh hard, and my eyes followed his hands as they came up from the table and pressed against his eyes. “Okay, so what could this mean?” Dad demanded after a moment, blinking hard as he looked at Dr. Sims. “If Jean was seeing Abbs, could that have been a hallucination?”

“I’m not sure,” Dr. Sims muttered, looking down at the notes on his paper. “If Jean and Cole had hallucinations when interacting with the tar, I’d simply chalk it up to that and move on. But with the Vermaak’s history too, I’m not…not sure what to make of it.”  

“She’s not a forced conduit,” Aunt Sia interjected, finishing with the mugs she was messing with. She walked over, moving to lean between Dad and Dr. Sims and hand Brent and I cups of hot chocolate. It was funny—you could always find her in the kitchen when she was trying to think through something. A part of me was sure that’s why I loved sugary things so much. “The Vermaak went insane because their power was eating their neuroelectricity.”

“Yeah, but if she was injected with tar, could that have done something like the CRB solution the First Sons were using on the Vermaak?” Dad asked. 

“Retroviral integrase?” Dr. Sims asked before shaking his head. “No, can’t be. That would only work if she wasn’t activated.” 

Dad groaned slightly, the noise interrupted as Aunt Sia asked, “What about the power transfer device Cole MacGrath used? How was that different from the Vermaak?” 

“I couldn’t recover the files fully on that,” Dr. Sims admitted, clicking away, “But from what I can guess, the original power transfer device was used on a one-on-one basis, with a core of raythium to fuse properties of the donor’s protein to the other Conduit. It looks like some sort of process involving mutagenesis and particle acceleration? I can’t really make sense of it. Basically the original device damaged the part of the DNA that hosted the Conduit gene and then rewrote it with the second power integrated, so those abilities were a part of their normal powers.” He turned to look at Aunt Sia fully. “It doesn't use the same system the Vermaak’s does, and the DUP used CRISPR and gene editing. They’re all different.”

Aunt Sia crossed her arms, the hand of one going to town on the forearm of another, scratching away. “So there’s no correlation,” she hummed, glaring at the computer screens like it was their fault. “What about the DUP?” She asked. “Don’t you have files on their experimentation?”

Dr. Sims shook his head. “I have one, that only talks about injuries, heavily redacted with no info about what sort of experiments they were performing.”

Aunt Sia shook her head, Dad’s hand reaching out to stop her stretching and holding the hand in place. “Okay, w–what about tar?” He asked. “Or that woman that could use tar, what was her name—”

“Sasha,” Zeke cut in. 

The moment Zeke spoke, Dad’s jaw tensed, and he looked like he was 30 seconds away from picking up the man and throwing him out of the front door himself. He glanced at me with that same anger, and I just knew it was because I told Zeke about the hallucination but not him. “Right.” Dad said flatly. “Sasha.”

Dr. Sims got to searching, declaring—much to Dad’s absolute frustration—that there was nothing on tar. “But Sasha is mentioned in Wolfe’s notebook,” he hummed, scrolling through scans of the journal’s pages. 

“What for?” Aunt Sia asked, looking over Dr. Sims’ shoulder. 

“Apparently she was on Wolfe’s team when they were testing on Warner,” he hummed, scrolling just a tad to pull up more text. “She’s the one that determined all the properties of the…Warner’s Threshold…”

“That’s the evolution-to-mutation thing, right?” Brent asked. 

Aunt Sia nodded. “Absorbing RFE through a blast core, yeah.”

The way Dr. Sims drew off peeked Dad’s interest. “What’s up?” He asked, apprehensive. “Is…could the RFE be doing this to Jean?”

Dr. Sims didn’t answer immediately; whatever he was reading grabbed Aunt Sia’s interest, her hand pulling away from Dad’s hold to settle on Dr. Sims’ shoulder, squeezing once to get the man to look at her. They shared one of those looks, one of the ones Dad would reserve for talks within earshot of us when he felt there was some information that someone either didn’t know, or didn’t need to. 

But it didn’t stop Dr. Sims from speaking. “No, no, just…Can I ask you something?” He gave Dad his full attention, who just seemed absolutely confused on why his friends suddenly looked worried. “How many Core Relays do you think you’ve absorbed over the years?”

Dad blinked before chuckling, the sound a bit incredulous. “I don’t know? It’s been a while, Eugene.” After a moment, though—when Dr. Sims’ stare didn’t let up, he asked, “Wh–why does it matter?”

“I’ll spare you the math,” Dr. Sims said, turning back to the computer to begin to read from yet another section of the journal. “‘Absorbing the raw power from Blast Cores, a conduit's ability to harness energy reaches a precarious tipping point after accumulating between seven to nine cores. Beyond this threshold, the conduit's physiology undergoes a tumultuous shift. Initially marked by heightened abilities, this excessive energy absorption eventually sparks deleterious manifestations.’”

“Cole had to absorb seven to use the RFI,” Zeke threw in. 

My brow furrowed as I silently counted something off in my head, piecing thoughts together bit by bit. Seven to nine cores. Dad was scared the one he used on us was enough to mess me up, but he’d had far more than one, right? 

I glanced at Brent, who seemed to be coming to the same conclusion I did; Dad’s used way, way more than seven—probably just in this year alone.

“You’ve…it’s definitely more than nine, isn’t it Del?” Dr. Sims asked. “I gave you eight just for the twins and that’s not counting the five we found in Spokane after you were cornered by the Akurans, when you had Jean’s power.”

“You used six of those generator things at the construction site.” Brent realized, “When you got mine.”

“That’s eleven alone,” I murmured. 

“How many do you think you’ve used overall?” Aunt Sia interrupted. “If you had to guess, because this…it’s concerning, Delsin.”

“Didn’t I give you three or four when you were fighting Augustine in Seattle?” Dr. Sims added, looking off to the side as he tried to recount a memory I’m sure they all wanted to forget.

Dad nodded absentmindedly. “Yeah there…there were four when that happened. I think Abbs and I found four after I got her power too,” Hit brows knit so close that the lines on his forehead looked like waves. “And I know there were a lot after I got Hank’s power. Yours too.” Dad leaned back in the chair, eyes turning to look at the popcorn ceiling. “If I had to say, I think…I think I’m close to twenty? Maybe even over it.”

Everyone fell silent, looking between each other with the same tense silence like we all expected Dad to explode right in front of us or something. Even the warmth of the mug of hot chocolate wasn’t enough to warm my hands as I asked, “If you’ve absorbed…that many, then why aren’t you…”

Dead? A walking corpse? Some sort of monster? I wasn’t even sure what to say.

Dad’s head came down when I asked my question, eyes falling to the polaroid of Warner on the table. He picked it up tentatively, bringing it closer and looking at it with a mix of intrigue and pity. “I don’t know,” he said softly. “Maybe Wolfe was wrong. Or maybe there’s something different with the Ray Sphere and that’s why Warner looks like…that.” He set the polaroid face down, looking back at Dr. Sims. “Maybe the Core Relays are different. They aren’t exactly exploding bombs.”

“No, but they are miniature fission reactors,” Dr. Sims said, turning to his laptop to begin clicking away on it yet again, muttering to himself, “Fission, fission…” as he typed what I had to assume was that same word into the search database.

“Do we really need to worry about this right now?” Dad asked, exasperated. “I mean, we’ve always known I’ve been a bit weird when it came to Core Relays, really, it’s not—”

“We just wanna make sure there’s nothing wrong,” Aunt Sia cut Dad off, her other hand going to his shoulder. “There could be some sort of…radiation radius or something if you’ve absorbed that many Core Relays.” She smirked playfully, looking down at Dad. “Maybe you’re a biohazard.”

Dad rolled his eyes. “I’m being serious, Alessia. This is about Jean, not me—”

“It may have just became about Jean,” Dr. Sims interrupted. “Sasha LaRue was a part of the Ray Sphere project.”

Dad immediately snapped forward, leaning his elbows against the table like getting close to the computer was gonna help him read the words better. “I thought she was just some crazy lady in Empire City?” Aunt Sia asked, glancing back at Zeke. 

“We…she had ties in the First Sons, but Cole and I never figured out what sort.” Zeke said. “Just knew she and Kessler were a ‘late night booty call’ sorta couple.” 

I cringed. Oh god, I could have lived without that trivia fact. 

Dr. Sims stared at Zeke, processing that information for a moment before trying to etch-n-sketch the idea from his mind with a shake of his head, saying, “Anyways—yeah, she’s mentioned a few times in regards to the Ray Sphere. Turns out she was the lead engineer of the First Sons’ Empire City branch.”

“So she knew exactly how the Ray Sphere worked,” Dad hummed, glancing at Aunt Sia. “Probably knew all about Ray Field Energy too.”

Aunt Sia didn’t look convinced. “But…Ray Field Energy can’t be what’s making Jean sick…right?” She asked, unsure. “Every Conduit needs RFE. Could it be something genetic? Like an intolerance?”

Dad shook his head. “We checked already.”

Zeke clicked his tongue in thought. “Y’know, the gene ain’t the savior y’all make it out to be. People with the gene could still get the Plague.”

Dad rolled his eyes, not bothering to look at Zeke as he said, “Yeah, but people with the gene don’t just stop working.”

“They do if you mess with RFE. Why do you think most of ‘em died in 2011?” Zeke shot back. “We used the RFI.”

Dad chewed on the inside of his cheek as Zeke called, annoyance slowly dissipating as he thought through his logic. “Eugene,” he said, raising his head to look at the man. “See if you can pull up anything about Ray Field Energy being weird. Adverse reactions, whatever was wrong with Bertrand—the whole deal.”

“That’s not a lot to go by,” Dr. Sims muttered, bringing his hands to the keyboard anyways. 

“We need to know,” Dad said, glancing up at me.

We were there for what felt like forever. Long enough for Archie to try and take a drink of my hot chocolate, and Aunt Sia to grab both rats and return them to their cage in the living room. Long enough for Zeke to become restless and start pacing the five steps it took to span the entirety of the kitchen. Long enough for my hands to start shaking as I thought about everything. The hot chocolate was frothless and cold now, bringing nothing more than a chilly distaste to my mouth that could also be felt in the room. 

Eventually, Dr. Sims shook his head. “I’ve got nothing on RFE and Conduits,” he told Dad. “RFE and humans, sure, but not Conduits.”

Dad’s brow furrowed. “RFE and humans? Like the Plague?”

Dr. Sims shook his head. “No, that’s what’s weird—it’s about the Ray Sphere.”

Dr. Sims began scrolling back up as Zeke paused to listen, reminding him, “The Ray Sphere caused the Plague. ‘Course it’s mentioned.”

Dr. Sims, though, disagreed. “It’s talking about how they prevented the Plague.”

Everyone snapped to attention at that. 

“You can prevent the Plague?” Dad asked. A thousand emotions passed through his face—shock, confusion, doubt, anger. “So Kessler managed to fuck that up too? Great.”

Dad’s hand clenched until the knuckles of his fist turned stark white, barely acknowledging Aunt Sia’s reassuring hand on his shoulder. I couldn’t blame him for his anger; if I had found out that my parent’s deaths could have been prevented, but years after the fact?

I’d be fuming too. 

Dr. Sims, oblivious to the fact that Dad looked like he was a huff away from breathing fire, asked over his shoulder, “Hey, Zeke—the Ray Sphere only detonated once, right?”

Zeke, who was frozen dumbstruck in the middle of the kitchen, took a moment to nod. “Y-yeah, it only went off the one time.”

“And Cole was holding it?” Dr. Sims asked, the word holding stressed. 

Zeke blinked. “Yeah? At least I think so. I wasn’t there. He…he would talk about how it burned his hands when he was holding it, though.”

Aunt Sia, with one final squeeze on Dad’s shoulder before letting go, asking, “What did you find?”

“It’s—it’s sorta hard to understand,” Dr. Sims admitted, finally settling his scrolling to a segment of the journal, “But it reads like they had a lot of issues in the beginning of testing with illness, just like the Plague, but then figured out how to keep the fallout from its detonation from happening.”

The Plague was something I really didn’t understand. To be fair, I don’t think anyone really understood it fully; it ripped through victims way too fast for any solid science on it, and with it being completely eradicated from the world with the RFI, no one ever really tried replicating it. Most people didn’t even know how it happened—the Ray Sphere wasn’t public knowledge. Far as I knew, it was nothing more than an illness you’d occasionally see mocked up in conspiracy forums regarding chemical agents and aliens. 

What we did know about it was…weird. Contagious radiation poisoning. Contagious. No one really understood how that was even possible. 

Until now. 

Dr. Sims turned back towards his computer and began reading. “‘In the initial phases of our research, I harbored profound reservations regarding the implications of detonating the Ray Sphere—a device harnessing the raw power of nuclear fission. The prospect of manipulating such potent energy was both exhilarating and unnerving. I grappled with the uncertainty of its consequences, the unknown variables that could spiral out of control. It was already proving a terrible beast to control; those without the gene, when exposed to the energy output from the device, fell to an illness not unlike Acute Radiation Poisoning—only it battled with their neuroelectrical energy. Whatever it didn’t take to power the Ray Sphere, it sought to destroy. What was more alarming was how it seemed to spread to those outside of the vicinity of the detonation, as if the energy from the Ray Sphere jumped from person to person, seeking a genetically-positive person to attach to.’”

“Jeez,” Dad breathed when Dr. Sims paused. “So the fallout, what, seeks out the gene?”

“Seems like it,” Dr. Sims confirmed. I could see him highlight the section in the reflection of his glasses, and throw a copy of it into a note in the background, storing it away for himself later. This was probably a gold mine to him. He cleared his throat before continuing, “‘Despite my concerns, Kessler continuously reassured me, promising that as long as we found a suitable core, there would be no repercussions beyond the unfortunate souls sacrificed to the Ray Sphere for its initial phase. At first, I didn’t trust him. What if our actions unleashed catastrophic repercussions beyond our comprehension? But now, I see how wrong I was, and why Miss LaRue calls him her little oracle. After three failed attempts, Kessler insisted that I place someone with the gene directly beside the Ray Sphere, perhaps even holding it, for better results.

“‘Kessler was right. The Ray Sphere needs approximately eight hundred to a thousand microvolts from neuroelectrical energy to fully charge the Blast Core—about ten to twelve people. They all fall victim to sudden exposure to Ray Field Energy—including the genetic carrier in question. Who wouldn’t, when face to face with a miniature nuke with twice the concentrated energy? But where they fell, the carrier rose. Eleven test subjects turned to ash in an explosion greater than anything I’d seen before when activating the Ray Sphere, only for one to be birthed from the ashes. When the dust settled and we turned to our monitors for information on the fallout of the detonation, we found there was none. The scintillation counters were the only proof the Ray Sphere even detonated—well, that and the smell of burnt leather in the room when we deemed it safe to enter with hazmat. The test subject himself was in disarray and needed to be temporarily placed on a ventilator due to distress from direct exposure to radiation, but within the week, he was healed, no longer exhibiting symptoms of radiation poisoning and with the ability to manipulate flames. He had become a conduit for the raw, ionized energy, and came out of its blast anew, his proteins absorbing the radiation in full and preventing any fallout from occurring.’”

My mind was reeling. So the…the Conduit they used in their experiment basically sucked up all of the radiation? I glanced around the room to see Zeke’s back turned towards us all, nodding slowly. When we were out on the roof of that train car by his house, Zeke had said Cole went into a coma. “Took him a while to brush off what happened to him after the Blast,” he had said. 

Not because it was explosive, but because he was fighting radiation poisoning. 

“‘With no risk of radioactive fallout upon the use of the Ray Sphere, we’ve essentially secured funding from DARPA for any experimentation in the near future. As long as a gene carrier, a conduit for the Ray Field Energy, activates the Ray Sphere, the only damage to come to the world will be from the Conduit’s power as it becomes overloaded from so much RFE, and the poor souls that sacrifice themselves for the greater good.’” Dr. Sims finished before leaning back in his chair, closing out the translation pop-up. 

Dad looked furious. “So they knew.” He said. Not asked. “They knew it could go wrong, and they still set up everything to happen the way it did.”

“I don’t understand,” Aunt Sia murmured, moving to lean against the end of the table on my right. “Kessler didn’t care about the risk? Or did he want that to happen?”

Dr. Sims shook his head. “No. No, I don’t think Kessler would have wanted there to be a Plague. Wolfe said for the greater good. They were still working towards fighting the Beast and keeping humanity safe. Something happened.”

“Like what?” Dad demanded. “If the Ray Sphere detonated once, then how did it cause the Plague?”

Dr. Sims inhaled deeply, trying to brush off Dad’s anger. “There’s something here about proximity related to residual RFE post-activation,” he hummed, like it meant something. “They took everything into account.”

Wait—post what? I held up a hand half-heartedly like a student in class, not bothering to say anything until Aunt Sia hummed, “What is it, Jean?”

“Dr. Sims said post activation, right?” I said, looking between him and Dad. “And th–the notes said something about the Conduit’s power overloading. So did the Ray Sphere have to explode for the radiation to occur, or did it have to just be turned on?”

Dad and Dr. Sims stared at me for so long that I began to try to defend myself with, “Sorry, I don’t really get how this works—” before Dad held up a hand to silence me, staring at the wood grain as he worked something out. 

“It…It wouldn’t need to explode, would it?” He asked. “It’d just need to begin the fission process. That’d be enough.”

Dr. Sims slowly nodded, rubbing a hand against his chin in thought. “It would need to output that energy with or without the Conduit,” he hummed, “and Wolfe said something about the ‘overloading RFE’ and uh…an explosion bigger than what had happened before. That’s gotta mean there’s a version of the Ray Sphere being activated that doesn’t cause as big of a detonation.”

Dad nodded, his own more pronounced. “That means something could’ve happened when it was in someone else’s hands. Hey, Zeke, didn’t you say the Ray Sphere was taken by some gang back in—”

Dad faltered as he looked back to where Zeke had been standing only to see he was no longer there. Instead Zeke was by the sink, leaned over it like he was ill, gripping the edge of the counter with a grip usually saved for squeezing the life out of something. “Zeke?” Aunt Sia asked softly.

“A Conduit has to activate the Sphere?” Zeke asked, voice lower than I've ever heard it.

Dr. Sims glanced over at Dad, who looked just as bewildered. “I, uh...yes,” he confirmed hesitantly. “A Conduit has to be within…thirty-five centimeters of the Ray Sphere and holding it to act as a...well, a conduit for the RFE.“ He glanced back at the screen. ”Seems that's where Kessler got the name, in fact.”

Zeke's head shook as it fell, like he was refusing to believe what he was hearing. What was going on with him? He was acting like he was just diagnosed with the Plague himself. Brent looked over at me bewildered and all I could do was shrug.

Dad, though, didn't have as much tact. “What happened, Zeke?” he asked, eyes narrow as they bore through Zeke's back. “Do you know how the Plague started?”

Zeke breathed shakily, giving himself a few seconds to keep his head hung low as he collected himself. He reached up and pulled off his polarized glasses, running a hand across his face hard like he was trying to wipe away dirt. It's when he turned that I realized he was crying.

“I think I started it,” he whispered, refusing to meet anyone's eyes. “What did you just say?” Dad asked flatly, the hold on the back of his chair tightening.

Zeke kept his head low, eyes pointed at the ground but seeming to look far past it to some long-forgotten memory. “There was this...game of hot potato after the Blast as everyone fought to get ahold of the Ray Sphere. First John White pulled it from Cole's body after the Blast. Then the Dustmen got ahold'a it.”

“Dustmen?” I asked before I could stop myself. What kind of name was that?

“They were the old heir to the First Sons' gang.” Zeke informed me, only just glancing up. He saw how intensely everyone was looking at him, though, and his eyes fell once more. “He wanted the Ray Sphere back to eventually reclaim the throne from Kessler. He stuck it at the top of this huge tower he made with his powers, in some sorta charging cradle and had his men guarding it.

“We...Cole and I fought our way to the top of this tower and—you've gotta understand. There were Dustmen, there were First Sons, we were a good three hundred feet in the air and I had nothing but my pistol on me.” Zeke shook his head as he relived the memory. “And with everything else going on in Empire City...I was scared outta my mind. So when Cole was fighting Alden's men and I managed to get to the Ray Sphere and pull it outta that charging thing...”

His fist came down softly against the counter’s edge behind him, a beat far steadier than my own as I listened to his story. “I turned it on.” He admitted simply. 

It was almost instantaneous; Dad’s grip on the chair grew so strong that the wood backing splintered under his fingers, Aunt Sia’s protests unheard over Dad as he growled, “You what?”

“I was terrified,” he said, the admittance not really an excuse, but an explanation. He definitely didn’t seem to be defending his choice at all. “The world was going to hell in a handbasket and I barely had enough 9 millimeters to keep fighting against it. There were people who could suddenly make spiders outta scrap metal and tar that’d turn you into some zombie. My best friend was shooting lightning outta his hands and the most I could do to help him was hand him rubber gloves.” Zeke sighed hard, closing his eyes. “Kessler told me he…he knew why it didn’t work when it fizzled out. Why I didn’t get powers. And that he would show me what needed to be done if I just gave him the Ray Sphere. So…I did it. I gave him the damn thing. I was scared and thought that by getting myself some powers I’d live to see the next day. 'Cause then? That wasn't guaranteed.”

Guaranteed. 

“How long are you willing to fight for these Humans when they’re guaranteed to turn on you in the end?” Augustine’s voice rang in my ear. “Even the great Cole MacGrath was betrayed by his closest companion.” 

“You’re the one that turned on Cole,” I whispered, not realizing my eyes had fallen until I looked back up at Zeke, whose own were solemn. 

“You knew?” Brent demanded accusingly. 

“Kids.” Aunt Sia interjected sharply. 

“So you just set off the Ray Sphere because you were jealous?” Dad asked Zeke. 

“I was scared. Hell, we all were—”

“There was no one else close to the Ray Sphere?” Dr. Sims demanded, trying to click through some translation notes at rapid speed. 

Zeke shook his head. “Just me.” He began to pace back and forth in the three steps it took to get from the counter on one side of the kitchen to the oven on the other.

“There would have been no one gene-positive close enough to absorb the latent RFE. At least not in a way that mattered before the scattering of radioactive dust,” Dr. Sims informed the room.

Zeke stopped pacing, head falling into his hands. “Christ, did I cause the Plague?” he whispered aghast.

It was almost instantaneous; for a moment, Zeke looked like he was about to fall to his knees with how hard they were shaking, and then a second later he was flying back into the pantry door, Dad nothing but a plume of dust and concrete as he moved to beat on Zeke.

Whatever happened next was hell, and I was barely able to keep track of it all. There was a dogpile of limbs in the kitchen I was shoved away from. Brent emerged from it fully steel, holding Dad back and pushing him against the cracked pantry door as he fought to get out of Brent’s grip. Aunt Sia helped Zeke stand, trying to wipe away at his bloody nose with a random rag she pulled from the oven’s handle. Dr. Sims moved to intercept Dad's concrete-laden arm as it raised and aimed indiscriminately at Zeke, his face more furious than I've ever personally seen him.

“You killed them!” he screamed, loud enough that his voice echoed through the room. Brent pushed Dad against the wall and was trying to talk him down and I'm pretty sure the only thing that kept him from catching a right hook was the fact that he was Dad's son. “My parents died because of you!”

“I didn't know,” Zeke insisted, holding the white rag to his face that was steadily turning red. “I just...I was trying to protect myself—”

“You nearly killed the world because you were jealous,” Dad spat, face contorted in rage. “You gave Kessler back the Ray Sphere to get powers! You were a coward—”

“Delsin—” Dr. Sims tried to talk Dad down, though it was no use.

“I was.” Zeke agreed without hesitation. “You think I haven't regretted it every day of my life since? I’ve been trying to make up for my mistake ever since—”

“Regret isn't gonna bring back everyone you killed,“ Dad snarled.

“I know.” Zeke said solemnly. “One of those people that died was my best friend—”

Dad scoffed. “Save me the fucking sob story—you're the one that betrayed him! I'm supposed to give a shit about how sorry you feel when you turned on him willingly?” He shook his head, glancing at Dr. Sims, who was still holding his dominant hand. “Did you know about this?” he demanded.

Dr. Sims shook his head and opened his mouth to say something when Aunt Sia said, “I did.”

Dad's head snapped her way and he glowered, the stare enough to make my own spine chill despite being to the left and behind her. “You what?” he growled.

Aunt Sia didn't even flinch. “I knew what happened. Zeke told me years ago when we first started working on this together,” She motioned to the papers on the table.

“And you didn't think to tell me?” He looked beyond pissed. Betrayed, like Aunt Sia was the one to activate the Ray Sphere.

Aunt Sia raised an eyebrow. “Would you have understood?”

Dad blinked, his scowl just barely slipping off of his face. “What?”

“You're not human, Delsin. Not like Zeke, not like Reggie, and not like me.” Aunt Sia pointed to her own chest as Dad’s nostrils flared the moment she brought up his brother. “You don't get how...how scary and inadequate it can feel to be the person who can't do anything and to watch people you love put their lives on the line. You can—you can make a nonprofit to help or go undercover or sneak people out of the country but it's never enough.” Her hand fell. “I spent five years trying to help the Conduits and you were able to fix their issues in a week. Do you know how hard it is to feel like you're never doing enough when people you care about are in trouble? To be pushed aside and practically be told to let the Big Boys handle it?”

My eyes fell from looking at Aunt Sia to staring at the tile, her words settling on top of that weight in my chest that I couldn't seem to shake off anymore. Do you know how hard it is to feel like you're never doing enough when people you care about are in trouble? I could guess. I felt it in the pristine white of that First Sons base, watching Dad and Brent fight and having to run away like a coward. Helping Dad bandage chemical burns on his flesh that made the entire room smell like weirdly sweet bacon whenever the wrappings would come off. And I couldn't do anything to prevent that, even as a Conduit—or whatever I was now. Told to run away, asked to hide on the floorboard of a car, told that I 'didn't need to worry about it' when wanting to know more about everything.

And I guess that, even though I didn't really approve of handing over a miniature nuke to a crazy cult leader, I could understand why Zeke did what he did.

Dad, though, didn't. “That's different,” he insisted.

“Is it?” 

“You didn’t sell out Eugene to Augustine,” Dad said, before his eyes returned to Zeke and they immediately became darker. “He fucked over MacGrath.”

“And I’ve done everything I could to honor Cole and his sacrifice,” Zeke, surprisingly, snapped back. “You think I’m not haunted by what he had to do every goddamn day of my life?”

Dad shrugged off Dr. Sims’ hold. “He wouldn’t have had to sacrifice shit if it wasn’t for you.”

Aunt Sia sighed, exasperated. “Delsin, don’t act like you’ve never made a selfish mistake before.”

“I didn’t hand a goddamn bomb to Kessler!” Dad defended. 

“No, but you’ve done stupid shit plenty of times before.” Aunt Sia chastised. “Don’t act like you’ve never been blinded by your emotions.”

Dad glowered long after Brent let him go, not moving from his spot. He seemed to be debating on where to place his anger, and I saw his right hand twitch once without raising as his eyes shifted between Aunt Sia to Zeke and back again. The tight fist relaxed, but he still had enough anger in him to let them settle on Zeke and growl, “I’m only saying this once, Dunbar: You do anything to risk my family while we’re trying to figure out what’s wrong with my girl? I’ll kill you. You’re here because you’ve got good information, and nothing else.” 

The air itself felt thick as Dad stared down Zeke, waiting for some form of acknowledgement. “Alright,” Zeke relented, the first to break eye contact. 

Aunt Sia held up a hand, trying to force Dad and his cold glare to stand down. “We should stop there for today,” she said, voice suggesting she was leaving no room for arguments. “We’re getting nowhere like this, and I think everyone could do with a break right now, okay? So let’s stop.” 

Dad glowered our way a moment longer before storming off, making sure to give Zeke a shoulder check on his way past before he threw open the back door and disappeared into the backyard. 

It was hard to pretend like everything was normal for the rest of the day. 

The journal didn’t really get us anywhere, and when Dr. Sims declared he wanted to take me to a hospital tomorrow and run tests? I became nervous. “There’s a specialist there that can see her that might be able to help,” he told Aunt Sia. “And the endocrine unit and palliative care are on the same floor. That’s where the other prime Conduit experiencing strange symptoms is.”

Zeke disappeared soon after Dad retreated to the backyard, mumbling something about ‘giving space’ that he didn’t even let Aunt Sia try to retort to. She sighed hard as he closed the front door before turning to Brent and I, leaving Dr. Sims to mess around on his computer as she steered us to the living room, trying to use the allure of a movie to help us pretend like none of that just happened. 

She tried to make the resulting day fun. Tried being the keyword. Trips down memory lane where she reminded us of every young-age blunder she saw over the five years she watched us, equally embarrassing moments from Dad’s past before we were born.

“Met her soon after I met Eugene,” Dad said when he had returned from outside, anger somewhere dissipated. “She would locate the suspected conduits he was picking up, and Project Sanctuary would sneak them outta Seattle. Eventually had me doing the same thing.”

It was hard work, tearing suspected gene carriers out of jail cells and getting them out of the country, but they did it together with the network Aunt Sia had built over the years. “I started Project Sanctuary soon after I began volunteering at the Conduit Rights League,” she told us, “About a year after Eugene was taken from me.”

Dad and Aunt Sia really got to know each other in the after, though; those few months after Augustine’s crimes were shared but before the government was strong-armed into doing anything about them, Aunt Sia was there trying to help the Conduits that were trickle-released from Curdun before its doors closed. She was there to protest when they were opened again. “With the pandemic, and your mother’s condition, I didn’t visit her as much as I wanted for fear of getting her sick,” Aunt Sia admitted when we asked her why, since she knew Dad since we were born, there was no evidence of her existence. “And besides, you know me—addicted to my work. I had a lot cut out for me then,”

But everything she said, all she meant to be some sort of melancholic sharing of truth, was nothing more but another straw on the back of this burden that kept feeling like it was crushing my chest in. I knew so little. I was the cause of so much. I couldn’t stop thinking about everything that had happened in the last few weeks; the lies and the pain and the truths and the fights. 

I even made the mistake of going online at some point and was bombarded with new notifications; someone found my art blog online, and it spread, fast. There were so many messages, so many death threats, that I had to go hide in the bathroom and cry as I deactivated every source of me online. Not before seeing news updates about COLE, since my name was tied to them now. 

Protests, riots. More bomb threats than should have been allowed. COLE was officially defunded in 8 states, and forced to close by government order in 3 of those. CRON, the conduit registration bill, suddenly had enough signatures to pass the House, and was set to be voted on in the Senate. 

And this was all because of me, and what I did to Seattle.

I tucked my phone into the couch after that, ignoring every missed email and social media notification because I was so sure what they would be about that I figured it would be better to not even look at them. But I couldn’t stop thinking about them. God, I couldn’t—not during the movie Aunt Sia put on, not during dinner, and not even when she tossed me a pair of soft pajamas that I almost immediately dropped, declaring a girls night. “You all find a place to sleep,” she said, waving off Dr. Sims, Brent and Dad in a jokingly dismissive way. “Jean and I will be in my room.”

She ushered me into her bedroom and, after a brief moment where she helped Dr. Sims find comfort on her couch, returned, closing the door fully behind her and locking it for good measure before turning to face me, holding up my phone. “You forgot something,” she said, moving to the big king sized bed and handing it to me before crawling in. 

“Oh,” I smiled, trying my best to look grateful as I set down my hair brush and reached out to grab the phone, “Thanks.” I immediately put it on the nightstand beside the bed, face down. 

Aunt Sia sighed, “Alright, hon.” She raised an eyebrow when I looked at her. “You father isn’t in the room anymore. Out with it.”

I blinked, brow furrowing. “What do you mean?”

“I’m not blind, Jean.” Aunt Sia said softly, concern laden in her voice. “You’ve barely smiled since you’ve been here. I can hardly get any interaction out of you. What’s wrong?”

I looked away from her, shrugging and grabbing the hair brush again. “Just tired. I could barely sleep in that van.” 

Aunt Sia gently took the hair brush from me and began to go through my hair herself, working out the knots. “I don’t believe you,” she hummed. Non-accusingly but still all the worried. 

I sighed hard, and admittedly said a bit snappily, “I’m just tired,” trying to reinforce the lie to her. To myself. All it did was make me sound more guilty. 

“Jean.” 

I could feel her eyes boring into me from behind as she set the brush down and began to braid my hair, small hands moving expertly to make a french braid tighter and neater than anything I could ever do. I looked up at my reflection in the vanity mirror in front of her bed and sighed, hating how deep the eyebags looked. “I’m…I’m sorry.” I began. 

“It’s alright, I shouldn’t have pushed—”

“No not that—well, actually, yeah. That too.” My eyes traveled down to my cast, the same deep blue as those waves that devastated Seattle covering the ashen and yellowed bruises, the same shades as the remains of COLE in Portland. “I…a bunch of people found my blog and…they weren’t nice about it.”

Aunt Sia’s brow furrowed slightly. “How so?”

I didn’t answer, pushing Aunt Sia to pull her own phone out and go straight to the blog. Shit. Right. I gave her the link to that. She scrolled for a moment, seeing nothing innocuous until she got to the comments—and that’s where her anger flared. “Wh–” she cut off, scrolling further. Switching to reblogs. Her nostrils flared, gray eyes almost steeling like Brent’s and the hand holding my braid in place tightened. “Those assholes,” she hissed, dropping her phone and looking up and meeting my eyes in the reflection of the mirror. “Jean, how long have you known about this? We need to tell your father—”

“No!” I cut her off, a bit too loud. I screwed my eyes shut and inhaled deeply, forcing myself to be quieter. Involving Dad was the last thing I wanted to do, especially after everything today. “No, no–not Dad. Not now. Please.”

Aunt Sia, fury still in her eyes, let her face soften slightly. “Why not?”

It took me far too long to answer, instead glancing at the screen of her phone; she was on a picture I’d done of a beach. Pastels. That one had so many comments—not just of people saying how the art sucked, but saying I had planned this the whole time. That I wanted to flood Seattle, that I wanted to kill everyone I did, and this romanticizing of the tall waves was proof. “It…” I drew off, unsure of what to say. “He doesn’t need to worry about it right now.”

I could hear Aunt Sia sigh gently. “That’s not for you to decide.” 

A warmth of upset, of anger, lit in my chest. “I’ve already caused him enough issues, he doesn’t need to keep worrying about me—”

“Hey,” Aunt Sia cut me off, hushing me like one would some spooked animal. Her eyes met my reflection. “Now, Jeanie, listen to me. Everything that’s happened wasn't your fault. You hear me? It doesn't matter what anyone says, it wasn't your fault.”

I shook my head. “I killed one hundred and thirty seven people, Aunt Sia. People keep attacking COLE because of it. Dad’s cover was blown! All the people that were hurt and th-the politicians…” my voice cracked and I clammed up immediately, barely able to choke out after, “If I was more careful in the alley or the fight with Augustine—”

“Don’t you dare blame yourself for that, Jean,” Aunt Sia interrupted. “You’re a child.”

“Does that matter?” 

“Of course it matters.” The hairbrush came down, and she moved to look at me intensely through the mirror from over my shoulder. “You were dealt a bad hand and you did what you did out of desperation. Who could blame you?”

“Everyone,” I said softly, looking down at the printed quilt at the end of the bed. “Everyone does.” 

Aunt Sia sighed, silence hanging in the air for a few moments before she started. “I think…I think what matters most is knowing—and accepting—that, sometimes…you won’t be able to help.” The way she said it so matter-of-factly made me raise my head to look at her in the mirror. She wasn’t staring at my reflection anymore; her eyes were down, staring at the dresser the mirror was posted on and yet far past it, eyes traveled somewhere foreign. The look was familiar; that's how Dad would look when thinking about his past. About everything that still threatened to drag him down. “Sometimes all there really is is guilt and shame, and the feeling of your entire life being a burden to those around you. But what I learned throughout the years is that people will only start to treat you like an inconvenience if you present yourself as one.”

“I already am.” I interjected. “I know I had the healing thing for only, like, a week, but—”

The glaze in Aunt Sia’s mind seeped away and they snapped up to meet mine in the mirror. “You're a person who needs help, and you have so many people in your life who are willing to go above and beyond to provide you with that help. Not because they pity you, not because it gets you off their back, but because they love you.” After a moment Aunt Sia seemed to know the thoughts forming in my mind before the sentence was finished being built, adding, “Even if it might not always look like it—hell, I've known your Dad long enough to be aware of just how harsh he can be sometimes. But he does love you. We all do.”

I looked down at my hands, disagreement rising in the back of my throat like bile. “I just…I feel so useless right now,” I admitted. Why was that one sentence so hard to choke out? “I’m either not helping or when I do try to help I…drown half of Seattle. I couldn’t even protect them when we were in New Marais.”

“It's hard to come to terms with the fact that sometimes all we can do is rely on the kindness of others, and it's frustrating to feel like you're unable to ever return just a tiny bit of everything they did for you.” Aunt Sia sympathized. I’d never understand how it came to her so easily. “But there is one thing you're missing: You surviving, you making it through hard times with their help, you being able to smile again? That's the best way to give back to the loved ones that want nothing more but to be there for you.”

My brow furrowed as I processed her words. Was that really it? Was it that easy? It didn’t feel that easy. It definitely didn’t feel like someone else’s love would absolve me of my sins. “Those people in Seattle had loved ones.” I said simply, eyes glancing over to look at Aunt Sia’s knees. “That mom that lost her kid in the COLE bombing? There’s so many innocent people that’ve been hurt, and it’s because of me in some way.” I could feel the frustration and anger and self loathing bubble up in my chest. “I—Dad can’t even go back to work, Brent can’t see his girlfriend, you’re stuck watching COLE explode after everything you’ve done for it—”

I hadn’t noticed I began to tear up until Aunt Sia took my face in her hands, squishing my cheeks slightly as she forced me to look at her. “None of that is your fault,” She insisted, eyes searching mine. “None of that was intentional. You didn’t mean to hurt anyone, and that’s enough—even if you may have. You were trying, and that’s a lot more than anyone else can say. You think those politicians have ever done a thing in their life that benefited anyone but themselves?” She shook her head, answering her own question. Her hands fell from my face, but she stayed close. “The only thing I want you to worry about right now is your health. Everything else is for us to worry about, I don’t want you to feel guilty for us caring about you. You’re worth all of this stress. No one—no government, no human, and no conduit will ever be able to convince me of the opposite.” Her shoulders squared a bit. “And I'll beat the shit out of everyone that even dares to try and tell me that what happened was something you should be blamed for."

God, there she was—the Aunt Sia I knew. She managed to pull an amused huff outta me, my halfhearted smile bringing a brighter one on her own face. “Now stop this moping, I can’t handle it. Let’s have one night where we pretend nothing’s happening, okay? You need a night off, especially since tomorrow’s gonna be busy.”

With a swallow and a nod I agreed, trying to shove away the pain for now. I knew she was right; Dad had told me Dr. Sims was able to order some tests for tomorrow. “There’s a specialist there that can see you that might be able to help, and they work in the same hospital where the other prime Conduit experiencing strange symptoms is,” he said. We’d be leaving in the morning. 

I couldn’t see it from her point of view, I couldn’t understand how I deserved her understanding—but maybe it was easier to lie to myself anyways. And as Aunt Sia went to a folder titled ‘Jeanie’ Favs’ in her pirated movies, I figured maybe she was right about one thing; I could use a reason to forget about everything right now.