Jeck stared at Evan with twitching eyes, still laying calmly on his bed.

  Evan tried to break free again, and he could feel his powers, their heat. But nothing – not the metal cell or the man - showed any signs of being affected.

  “Let him go, Jeck.” Vihn had an arm out with writhing plants around it.

  “Do you still remember my old nickname?”

  Vihn’s voice tightened. “Are you crazy?”

  “No… you don’t, do you? I’ll let him go if he can guess.”

  One lunatic after another.

  “Go on, guess.”

  Vihn sent his vines after Jeck, but they crunched and diverted up into the air, as if colliding with a wall.

  Evan hacked, his chest squeezing against the metal bars. “I don’t know it!”

  “Guess!”

  “Mind man? I don’t know. Gah!”

  Jeck’s eyes flickered shut. “Terrible guess.” He muttered, before falling back to sleep.

  The force that held Evan disappeared. He dropped to the ground, breath returning to him.

  “Freaking idiot,” Vihn said as he helped Evan stand.

  “Why? Just, what was that?” Evan said befuddled.

  Vihn threw his hands up, no words to be found. He climbed the ladder. “Just, watch him, Evan. Yell if he wakes up, the freaking idiot.”

  Evan massaged his chest. He’d rather be as far away from this guy as he could be. He grabbed the ladder, but before he could make his wait up, Jeck called out, “Wait.”

  “Vih-!”

  “Don’t yell,” he said. He was sitting up now. He took his head in his hands and cracked it to both sides. “I’m sorry if I hurt or scared you. I was testing something.”

  Evan kept his hand tightly against the ladder in case this guy tried to pull him again. “What do you want?”

  “I heard,” Jeck stood, now cracking his hands, legs, arms, any part of him as he twisted his body, while his wrinkled muscles contorted, “that you had the gift.”

  “The gift?”

  Jeck walked out of the cell, the door moving without him touching it. “That’s right. Molecular Dispersion. Break apart molecules. Cut their bonds, set them free.”

  As if there weren’t already enough obsessive, crazy people Evan had to deal with, here was another one. Evan stepped up on the ladder, which would hopefully allow him a head start if this guy did anything else crazy.

  Jeck said, “I never had a nickname. It was a trick question. But I thought maybe Vihn would know that. He almost killed me once. Well, nearly got me killed. Though, his plants did save me from a severe head wound… curtesy of the same beast that chases you now.”

  “Joseph Krow?”

  “Yes. He nearly destroyed us all. Years ago. There were three of us who escaped… well, I was dead you see, but Vihn brought me back. You know, pardon for the exposition, but he’ll never tell you what his real power is.”

  “Real power?”

  “Yes.” Jeck placed a hand on the ladder and leaned closer. His breath smelled of roots and earth. “He has a gift for getting people killed. Before me and mine, it was his own family. Don’t believe me? Ask him about his sister sometime. Anyway,” he let go of the ladder and unwrapped some sort of protein bar that he’d pulled from his pocket and took a bite out of it, “we have a lot, mmm, hopes for you, Evan. You penetrated purifier armor. There’s a reason why they’re raiding towns now, you see. They want to find you before you do something permanent. But destiny still has a way of making things happen, no matter how much we try to stop them from happening.”

  Evan found himself following the man closer, no longer on the ladder, hanging on to Jeck’s words instead. “How do you know all of that?”

  Jeck reentered his cell and sat cross-legged on the cot. “It’s my job to stay informed. That’s why The Ark has sent you to me. I just wanted to tell you the truth that few people in the Blood Red Army would offer.”

  “What’s that?”

  “That the people you try to save will die no matter what you do. There’s no use running from it. Instead, cut the cord, let nature take its course. Save those who’d sacrifice themselves, stop them from adding to the death count. The few for the many.”

  The idea was forced into Evan’s hands, but he couldn’t accept it as truth. He gave it back. “I’m never going to give up trying to help people who need me.”

  The bald man sighed and lay on his bed, facing the ceiling, with his hands laced underneath his head. “We’ll see.”

  Blink flashed into the next cell with a handbound Luna. Blink slipped her corroded hand out of her pocket and locked the cell behind her as she left it.

  Luna sat on the cell’s bed.

  “Heya,” Blink said to Evan.

  “Hi,” he said back.

  “Didn’t you catch that?”

  Evan was confused.

  Blink pointed to her ear. “Vihn called us on the comm. You gotta turn it on.”

  “Right.” He fiddled with the penny-sized devices in his ear.

  “-ello?” buzzed Vihn’s voice. “You ignoring me, kid?”

  “Uh, no, sorry.” Evan pressed his ear, but Blink giggled and gently lowered his hand.

  “Ah. Finally. Hey, you and Blink come up top.”

  Jeck yawned. “Go ahead, I’ll be here.”

  Evan hoped not. He and Blink made their way up the ladder to the main room.

  The smells of the lab had choked the group long enough, so Nan brought the group out to the patio to sit around a faded green table. Steam trailed up from the spout of a brass kettle that she poured tea from into a set of matching cups. “Luis and I were wondering when you’d visit again. We were beginning to worry.”

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  “I wanted to come sooner.” Vihn nodded politely as he took up his cup. Blink and Twitch followed. Evan gingerly took the tea as well.

  Nan sighed. “The broadcast has been flooded with footage of our friends being slaughtered. It’s… It’s very upsetting. Reminds me of the purge.”

  Evan couldn’t help but feel responsible. The purifiers were cracking down because of him, because of his father. He tried to block out what Jeck had told him about these things happening beyond his control, though he wondered if parts of that might be true. It seemed that this sort of genocide had been happening long before he had ever gotten involved. But now that he was involved, he wondered how he might stop it.

  The evening continued with Nan and Vihn’s conversation about the aggressive tactics the Federation was using. The raids were costing the Federation a great deal too, Vihn reassured Nan. “The violence will only drive more people to desperation. They won’t stand it for long.”

  “That’s what scares me.” Nan frowned and sipped the last of the tea. “I’d be careful with your allies, not everyone is as sympathetic to your kind like they used to be. Some people are saying this is it. There’s not many Afflicted left who aren’t either with us, dead, or in the Federation’s hands.”

  It was a grim thought, and one that prevailed the rest of the evening.

  *****

  The team returned to Ad Astra as night fell. Evan drank in the deep purple sky as the ramp closed them into the warmly lit interior of the ship. There were five bedrooms, and eight people. Cranston went to one, Daniel and Nyla to another, Rowic to a third, and Vihn to the cockpit. Blink and Twitch went to the same room, and Evan went to the last.

  He closed the door behind him. It was the same place he had woken up in after Hazard Station. It felt like that had been another life. The last few weeks with the rebels melded together for him, like living with them was becoming his new norm, death and war included.

  Evan shifted under the itchy covers of his bed, and had finally found a comfortable position, when Vihn knocked on the door and said, “Jeck found the base. We know where your friend is.”

  *****

  Anxiety teetered on Evan’s shoulders as he anticipated what Jeck had to say. The entire Phoenix One team, Luna, and Jeck gathered in Ad Astra. They all faced a wall of the ship where Jeck directed a projection by swiping a hand over his wrist computer. A familiar face scrolled across the wall; Charlie Crain, the guy who had taken over Monolith Industries from the Governor.

  “You may have seen this guy on the news lately,” Jeck said.

  Another face projected above the wall. It was a face Evan knew well; one he’d see every time he looked in a mirror.

  This hologram version of Evan said, “The reason I didn’t tell anyone I was heading to the North after graduation was because I wanted to go about it as an adult. There’s a lot to learn in the other Federation sectors, and I mean to stay longer to learn more about them.”

  Vihn asked, “is this CGI or a deep fake? We’ve seen this sort of video before, but Evan’s been with us since Hazard Station.”

  “Sort of.” Jeck pinched the screen on his wrist, zooming into the hologram’s features. “It’s his real face, but they’ve done some mapping to make him say whatever they want. The voice… I’ve run a lot of tests and it’s a perfect match.”

  It was incredibly infuriating every time he saw this perfect recreation of himself. He remembered what Luna had told him, how the people of the Federation were convinced these were real videos.

  The hologram continued, “The terrorist attacks by Afflicted at Hazard Station were horrible. I hope the purifiers are able to capture them soon.”

  Daniel cringed. “Sounds like him, but the writing’s terrible.”

  “How could it be an exact match?” Cranston asked. “They’ve been able to reconstruct voices before, but you guys have always been able to pick through it.”

  My exact voice. There had always been one person that Evan knew could copy any noise or voice perfectly. “Is it possible to track where the video originated from?” He asked.

  Jeck said in his oddly cadenced voice, “Already done. With the information from the enforcer,” he nodded to Luna, who’s arms were folded, “and what we already had - I’ve pinned the location of a Monolith facility in another mountain range up North.”

  That’s where Ken was, it had to be. Evan surged, knowing that the opportunity to save his friend had finally come.

  “There’s more,” Jeck said. He waved his hand, and three new projections appeared, each one with their own insidious implications.

  The first video was of President Caine. “Children, fellow citizens of this great Federation. Rejoice! For the age of peace is finally at hand. We will destroy the terrorists and make them hurt for all the pain that they have caused us. They will have nowhere to hide. Remember this, we are many, and they are few.”

  The next video was of the Governor. He said, “We know where they are. We’ve begun the process of routing them out. They will not last long.”

  It was obviously a fake video, or so Evan wished, but either way he felt something boiling in him as he looked at his father.

  The last video was of Andrea.

  “I’ve come to kill the Federation. I’ve already succeeded in bleeding one town. There’s no place for you to hide, sheep of Caine. I will sacrifice you to God, and lead my kind to destiny, for I am the Ark. If you close your doors, we will open them and slit your throats ourselves.” As the hologram said “open,” a table at the center of Ad Astra popped open and slid to the side, revealing a hidden door underneath it.

  Vihn frowned. “That’s a voice activated security system that only Andrea and I can open.”

  Daniel shivered.

  Nyla scoffed. “Don’t tell me that crap scares you.”

  “No! It’s just, bad. Like, who wrote these lines, man?” Daniel said.

  Cranston rubbed his temples. “You’re missing the point.”

  “Huh? It’s just a bunch of crappy CGI recreations. What’s it going to change?”

  “The problem,” Vihn sighed, “is what it means for the future. They’ve been able to fake stuff before, but this… it’s real. It wouldn’t take long for them to fabricate videos of any of us, fool our people into traps, or get into places they’re not supposed to.”

  Rowic shrugged. “I’m sure we can crack whatever system it is, I’m not worried.”

  Except… what if it wasn’t some program? Evan pulled the pieces together. “What if it’s not a computer doing this, what if it’s my friend?”

  The others looked at him as if he’d suggested something much cruder.

  “What do you mean?” Vihn asked.

  Evan told them about Ken’s powers.

  The team contemplated the information, until Vihn spoke up. “Jeck, gather the people you can spare, we’re going to this place.”

  Several of the group exclaimed and cursed at the suggestion.

  Cranston spoke low. “Last time we tried something like this…”

  “I remember,” Vihn said. “We’ve all lost someone fighting the Federation. We’re going to lose more if we don’t act. This is our only chance to hit them. If anything, we might find something at that facility that we can use against the Federation.”

  He looked around the room, but no one met his eyes.

  Jeck gave Evan a glance, reminding him what Jeck had said about Vihn getting so many people killed. It was Evan’s chance to save his friend, but what might it cost? What would it cost if he ignored this opportunity?

  He stepped forward, meeting Vihn’s hopeful eyes. “Let’s do it.”

  No one moved to join them.

  “Come on,” Evan goaded them. “Aren’t you rebels? You saw what the army is doing. They’re not holding back anymore, this is the end of the Afflicted, the end of us, if we don’t do something.”

  He felt a voice in his throat that was unlike his own, someone more heroic, someone he’d look up to. He let the voice take over.

  “You say that Vihn is no leader. You say I’m just a kid, that Luna is a Fed. You laugh at Daniel for his mistakes, call Cranston a traitor and Nyla hot-headed… You don’t believe in each other; you don’t believe in yourselves. Let the Feds come now and kill us, and kill our friends at Alpha, and Nan, and Luis. That’s what I hear you say - that you’ve given up, that you’re no good, that there’s no point. But there is purpose. There’s a reason why we’re alive, and others are dead. Screw it. If there isn’t a purpose to all this we’ve gone through, then we’ll make one. The dead can’t fight anymore, and now it’s our turn. You don’t like the world we live in? Change it. We have the power to change this freaking world. We can fight back. We can beat the Federation. We can’t give up, not now, because there’s thousands of dead people before you who didn’t get the choice to stand by and do nothing.”

  Evan’s skin buzzed, and his mind opened like millions of atoms had exploded from it. He realized three things now. The first was that he had a grasp on his emotions without his powers running away from his control (which was a miracle of its own). Second, everyone was staring at him, not with fear, not disgust, or even pity – but with conviction. The third thing he noticed was how there was a new freedom in his chest.

  Blink stepped forward. “I’m with you, Evan.”

  Twitch came next, nodding to Evan. Then stepped forward Daniel, and Nyla. Surprisingly, even Jeck and Luna nodded in acceptance of what Evan had said.

  Rowic and Cranston looked to Vihn. He seemed to be dissecting what was happening. Was he angry that his crew were acknowledging Evan over him? Willing to follow someone other than him? Was he jealous? Perhaps not, because he walked to Evan, placed a hand on his shoulder and said, “Let’s do this, kid.”

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