Night had fallen by now, but he still hadn’t gone inside. He hadn’t even moved from this spot, and no one had bothered him. All he’d done for the last few hours was think. Agonize about the crushing realization of what he’d missed all this time. How one minor development with his power gave him proof of the worst case scenario.

  A tiny bit of context was all it took to turn his world upside down. He gritted his teeth, fingers digging into the snow, then sighed. He wanted to muster up more anger, more burning hot range, but he couldn't. The emotion welling up inside his stomach was fear. Dread. Finn didn't fear Omega in the sense of what the monster could do to him. What he was afraid of was what Lyra would become, knowing almost for certain what her power was doing to her. At least in general terms. The broad strokes were enough in this case as the picture they painted wasn't something Finn could ignore.

  She was being influenced by the destructive tendencies of her power. Which explained her reluctance to leverage it to its fullest extent. Of course. Aiden had told her as much. He hated how much sense this was making. If something pushed her over the edge, it could have disastrous consequences. He needed to get to her before it was too late. Assuming she wasn't too far gone already. He shook his head. No, he wasn't even going to entertain that. He was going to keep his promise no matter what, now that he'd seen where she might end up.

  Omega served as an example of what could happen to her if she synchronized with her power more, didn't he? Finn wasn't sure how that process worked. He only knew he needed to stop her before the thing inside of her was fully realized.

  So did that mean he was going to abandon the people here? Run off alone for the sake of his own agenda, leave them to make what could be an impossible journey? They could die. He inhaled deeply, drawing a full breath of icy air into his lungs as he considered.

  Alright, what was the priority? The problem was that a lot of things seemed to be of extreme importance at the moment, but this was just one more thing that he felt couldn't wait, that he knew had the potential to go wrong at any time. But the truth was, he lacked the means.

  To save these people was to delay himself, there was no denying it. But if he left now, if he turned his back on them, could he live with that? Could he live with knowing he might’ve condemned them all to death, just because he couldn’t wait?

  His fingers clenched tighter, half-buried in the cold. The snow burned against his skin, but it was a distant sensation. It was nothing compared to the twisting knots in his chest.

  What was he supposed to do?

  Every second he lingered here, he lost time—time he might not have. But if he left them behind, if he let them fend for themselves in the middle of a frozen wasteland, wasn’t that just another failure? He’d spent so long trying to be better. Trying to do the right thing. If he made the wrong choice here, it wouldn’t just be a mistake. It would be a betrayal.

  But Lyra—she was changing. Whether she knew it or not, whether she was fighting it or not, she was losing herself. And if he let that happen, if he waited too long, would there be anything left of her to save?

  His breath came out in uneven puffs of white.

  Neither choice had permissible consequences. That was the heart of the matter. He didn't want to abandon these people, even though he owed them nothing, even though he would be better off without them.

  His senses had been observing the area around the camp, and while he had noticed a few low-class primebeasts walking past, they had all miraculously steered clear of this place. Some mental manipulation effect? He wasn't sure about the specifics, but it did remind him of something. Ines’ power was like that. He’d never asked her about the specifics after figuring out the nature of her abilities, and to his knowledge she had used it maybe a handful of times in his presence before he became aware of it.

  This phenomenon he was witnessing here felt the most similar to what the girl had done with Cyrus back during his and Calliope’s scheduled meeting with him that led up to the start of their training. People had just walked around them despite not consciously noticing their presence in the middle of a busy sidewalk.

  Such a power, if Ernesto’s artifact was indeed similar, was undoubtedly useful for escaping the country. Since Finn wasn't going to steal from a group of desperate refugees, the only way for him to stay under the… notice-me-not field, for lack of a better term, was by accepting the invitation. The question was, would that excuse be sufficient justification for staying? He didn't think so, though he wanted it to be.

  When he weighed his chances of making it out alone, he didn't think it was arrogant to say his likelihood of success was high. The physiological upgrades to his body were proof of that. Reflexes, strength, speed, durability, he was simply better. Even taking into account the eventuality of a higher class primebeast with exotic senses registering his presence, there seemed to be little that could truly stop him from crossing the border if he was focused on escaping and nothing else.

  Finn sighed, leaning his head against the wall of the shed behind him. If that wasn't a good enough practical reason to stay, then what was? Though, practicality could possibly be the wrong angle here.

  The moment he got up from the worst defeat of his life, over a year ago now, he’d resolved himself to take out Omega because it was his responsibility. Viewing this situation with the displaced people of South America through a lens of responsibility, the next step was to decide whether this was his problem. And if it was, how many more such problems would he encounter in the future, preventing him from completing his main objectives sooner?

  Empty platitudes wouldn't cut it anymore. Were these people worth delaying for, or not? He couldn't come up with an answer that night. Instead he remained seated, thinking about it in silence.

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  So by the time the dim, gray morning light shone down on him, he was in the same spot, allowing a small figure to find and approach him easily. Being able to sense the auras of normal humans now, Finn was familiar with the dancing melange of colors outlining people since he had gained more than two data points. That meant he already knew how the little girl he’d saved was feeling when she had walked up to him.

  “Ehh, hola, Mister Shade. I… name… Paloma,” came the introduction with deliberate slowness, broken English spoken with great effort.

  He turned and looked at her with a soft smile. “Hello, Paloma,” he replied.

  The preteen’s eyes widened when he actually responded, as if she hadn't expected him to grace her with a second of attention. She started and stopped speaking a few times, but whatever it was she wanted to say wasn’t coming out right, resulting in a frustrated pout while she glared at the snow beneath them.

  Finn, for his part, was content to wait for her to find her words as he began concentrating on the auras around him again. It gave him a feel for having access to this aspect of his power so ubiquitously.

  There hadn’t been a conscious revelation to unlock this advancement, but he had to admit it could've occurred for different reasons, or the flash of insight was subconscious and he didn't know what it was. He still didn't have a solid idea of what his power's criteria were for growth. Did it just make arbitrary decisions? No way to tell.

  “?Jugarás conmigo?” Paloma asked eventually, holding up some marbles. He could tell it was a question from the tone, not the words. It was easy to infer what she was asking from context as well.

  “Alright.” He stood and dusted off his pants. “How does it work?” he prompted, gesturing at the marbles with a tilt of his head to overcome the language barrier.

  Paloma beamed, clearly delighted that he was willing to play. She crouched down, clearing a small patch of snow with her sleeve until a hard, frozen surface peeked through. Carefully, she placed one of the marbles in the center, then looked up at him with expectant eyes.

  Finn studied the setup, picking up on the simple nature of the game. She gestured for him to do the same, so he knelt across from her, rolling one of the smooth glass spheres she gave him between his fingers before setting it down opposite hers.

  “Okay,” Paloma said slowly, pressing her lips together in concentration as she searched for the right words. Then she simply demonstrated, flicking another marble toward the center, aiming to knock his out of place. The small sphere struck his, sending it skidding sideways. She let out a victorious giggle.

  He blinked. Her aura had flickered for a moment before she threw. In a way he recognized, too. Then he thought back to the other times something like this had happened, and he saw an opportunity. Those had been times of extreme stress, this was far calmer. A simple game of marbles he could use as practice.

  “Again?” he asked, flicking his eyes to their game.

  Paloma nodded, eagerly resetting the marbles. Bending over the marbles like this, she looked so small, wrapped in a thick winter coat and gloves. Vulnerable and innocent in a way the war hadn’t ruined yet, having fun in such a trivial way. He wondered what the point of saving her would have been if he abandoned her today and it got her killed. A flash of guilt ran through him, and he quickly shut off that line of thought.

  The second time, the young girl drew her arm back for a second throw, he tried to channel the experiences he’d had. First while trying to push Lyra into Warp’s portal, then later when Omega had revealed his true nature. An outline. That was what it was. A colored form that corresponded with their aura which took the shape of their body. In a future position. The implications of this were insane, but he focused on trying to summon that outline again more vividly.

  It failed, nothing but an indistinguishable twitching blur preempting Paloma’s throw. Another hit. She urged him to throw harder, though he let her win and kept his eyes on her the next round.

  At its core, what were his senses? The ability to sense colors physically, for one, and what else? These emotions were more than just representations of fluctuating brain chemistry or the like; they took on their own forms, despite existing solely in people’s heads.

  Wait. People’s heads… mental! His power had a… what, a Physical Realm and a Mental Realm? Yeah, that was what he would call it for now. It was fine. What mattered was the distinction, rather than the nomenclature.

  Auras, then, were an extension of the mind, the consciousness which bled emotions, flickering in the vast universe like a candle in the dark. Finn was incapable of reading surface thoughts. He lacked the expertise to even begin to decipher thoughts from neural signals in the brain with his material perception, and he doubted he would reach that level in the next few years, if not more. That left the mental, where emotions flared off of the humans in his range, no context attached to them. But these associations, instinctive and fundamental to the mind, could grant insight because they were linked to his domain of colors. He likened it to something he had read about before, the mind linking colors to other things like sounds, numbers, smell, and so on.

  Synesthesia.

  Four more rounds passed with poor results until he made that crucial connection. Paloma made the same movement again, and he saw a transparent outline of Paloma’s arm, dyed in a myriad of emotions, make the expected throwing motion before she actually did, an outline of the marble rolling straight into his marble with picture-perfect accuracy.

  Her actual throw happened, and it was a bit off. It still hit, she was good at this game, though with a hint of inaccuracy. Of course, Finn thought. That made complete sense. The outline wasn’t a hundred percent accurate due to the differential created by a gap between hand-eye coordination and kinesthetic thought.

  In other words, the reason why his vision of the throw was skewed to just this side of reality was because Paloma wasn’t skilled enough to exactly execute a complex feat like that. He wasn’t looking into the future from any other source than what she decided to do, after all. The moment she committed to a course of action, her aura would manifest into that movement and show it at the exact same time, before she could actually move to do it with her body.

  Finn got up and corrected the little errors in her form so she could perform a better throw, and lo and behold, the hypothesized result turned out to be correct. Satisfied with his results, he decided to win a couple of rounds to make Paloma more competitive, testing a ton of variations on this new discovery. Definitely power testing. No other reason he should participate.

  They played together for the rest of that morning.

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