Ashes

[Anna Fernandez]

"Blue flames consumed a warehouse in a five alarm blaze in Los Santos tonight, and authorities suspect mutant involvement..." The eleven o'clock news was on quietly in the living room, but Anna reached for the remote and turned it up. Jen looked up from the book she was reading and frowned.

"Blue fire. Hey isn't Aidan -"

"Be quiet," Anna snapped, and the teen closed her mouth with a click. Anna looked over and shook her head. "I'm sorry."

"S'okay," Jen closed the book and sat up while the talking head on the news droned on, the images switching to a warehouse that was still smoldering, the only flames left a ruddy orange.

Oh Dios, por favor dime que Aidan no estaba involucrado. Anna pressed her hands to her lips, unable to look away from the screen.

[Alex Kaine]

"Your call has been forwarded to an automatic voice messaging system--"

Alex slammed the cordless phone back into its cradle and just as quickly picked it back up again to dial in the next number. Then he listened through another agonizingly slow four rings.

"Your call has been forwarded--"

Slam. Dial. Ring.

"Your call--"

SLAM.

He'd been punching the same four numbers in sequence every half hour since they cleared away dinner and realized Jake had disappeared without a word. It was past midnight now, and he'd given up leaving voicemails after the second round. Alex wouldn't put it past Aimee to just forget to leave her phone on, but Jim was meticulous about these things. Even carried a spare battery for his cell phone, and kept it charged.

Not a word. And all the police dispatch lines were jammed with some fire over in West Carson.

Alex backed away from the phone, took a few deep breaths, and hoped against all reason that he was worried over nothing. He buried his hands in his pockets to keep them from fidgeting and trudged down the hallway from the kitchen to the family room.

"Nothing yet," he said. "You think maybe--"

The news station was now displaying dramatic aerial footage of a gigantic brick building engulfed in towering blue flames. Alex stepped up to the sofa and gripped the backboard until his knuckles turned white. "Holy shit. Is that... What's going on?"

It was a rare occasion that Anna didn't rebuke him for that kind of language. A closer shot showed a half-dozen or so ragged-looking men fleeing the inferno into the waiting arms of police and paramedics. It took Alex a moment to dial in to what the newscasters were saying.

"...police say some of these survivors are members of a street gang who were using the building as a meeting place. If, indeed, mutants were involved, are we looking at an act of mutant gang violence?"

Alex didn't even hear what the field correspondent had to say. "Holy shit," he muttered again.

[Anna Fernandez]

Anna tore her eyes away from the television and hurried wiped at the emotion welling up in her eyes. "Did you get ahold of..." Her voice trailed off, Alex's face telling her what she needed to know.

She closed her eyes for a moment, praying, and then opened them. "Jen, can you go upstairs and make sure Jamie is still in bed?" The girl nodded and got up without complaint, her usual smirk replaced by a look of concern.

Anna dropped her face into her hands, her mind racing. Jake, Aidan, Aimee, and Jim - all missing since dinner. Hours without communication. Gang activity linked to blue fires... all coincidence? She pressed herself up from couch, unable to stay sitting any longer. The baby moved around, kicking fiercely inside, and she put her hand on her belly to push back gently. Quiet, Eva.

Her daughter kicked again, and Anna half-smiled. Then she looked at Alex. "I don't know what to think." She looked somehow small and vulnerable standing there, and a stark contrast to how he was used to seeing her.

[Aimee Connors]

Aimee huddled in the backseat of the police car, her arms wrapped around herself. The two police officers in the front were talking quietly to each other. Part of the Mutant Task Force or something. She hadn't really been paying attention.

Jim was sitting next to her, his knee going up and down like a sewing machine on crack. She put out a hand and placed it on his leg, which made him jump with surprise. "You're driving me crazy," she said, softening her words with a tired grin.

The driver looked at her in the rear view mirror. "So, have you thought of anything more to add to your statement yet?"

"We just want to go home," Aimee said sourly. "Kidnapped by fucking gang members, got away when everything started filling with smoke. I'm pretty sure I'd remember if anything else even more exciting happened." She leaned forward and pressed her hands on the plexiglass separating the front and back seats. "I think they were going to sell us to some scientists."

[Jim Lewinski]

It was the second time Jim had been in a squad car. His virgin trip was an experienced shared with Polly and José, and that felt worlds away. In summary, the circumstances which led to his police ride home differed little from his present situation: a life-threatening run-in with Los Santos gangbangers from which he was saved, then questioned, and then pardoned. This time, however, Jim was not bouncing giddily in his seat like some sugar-loaded ten year old; he was not asking questions, he was not spewing facts, he did not care about the technology, or the extra leg room, and, as for the police officers, they were window dressing. Aimee was keeping them admirably occupied with lines of practiced waffle. They were innocent of everything except lying, and it took Jim but a heartbeat of contemplation to realise it was a crime with which he was perfectly content.

There were, on the other hand, a great many peripheral issues on the matter of which he was far, far from content. Their time in police custody, for example, had been extensive and debilitating enough to be considered a breach of basic human rights. Hour upon hour, he'd sat hugging himself like an enfeebled old woman in the back of an ambulance, visited by strangers with the same questions. When he and Aimee were allowed to sit together, often he found himself being nudged awake by his purple counterpart, who, upon such occassions, was doubling up as a human pillow. His heavy eyes crept open only to be penetrated by searing lights and to have his senses baffled by a bombardment of voices, and sirens, and radios, and engines, and even the occassional crash or explosion - these were the sort of enhanced interrogation techniques deployed in Guantanamo Bay. It had been torture.

But, where he was once drunk with fatigue, Jim was now sober. The effects of the Nectar gas had subsided and his senses, resharpened, percieved every pinprick of pain in astonishing high definition. In the rear-view mirror, he caught a surprising glimpse of himself; he sported a raccoon face blossom of bruising which was obscured, in part, by a square of white qauze upon the bridge of his nose. Tell-tale flecks of blood had crusted black on his upper lip and his skewed spectacles shone like headlamps in the dark. Outside, the streets were empty. It was as if the entire population of Los Santos had sensed the black mood in the air and had taken refuge inside their homes to huddle around televisions. There was no way the warehouse inferno was not on every local news channel right now, Jim knew that, and he imagined Anna, sat watching the reports, uttering religious oaths because that was all she could do. That was all anyone could do, that is, if they were so inclined. And it was why Jim, in kinship with the dogs that trailed tongues from car windows, ached to be free of his cage.

[Alex Kaine]

Alex wished he could have said this sort of gut-clenching helplessness was rare. But he'd been feeling it more and more frequently lately. The Tres Once attack. The incident with Apollos. The blow-up at the rally, with Lana collapsing in his arms. Andrea, tormented by phantoms only she could see and hear. When the phone rang, it brought with it a new surge of hope and fear, but at least it wasn't more helplessness. He charged down the hallway and grabbed the handset before it had finished its second ring.

"Hello? Yes... Yes! Well, are they okay?"

He rushed back into the family room with the phone still in hand. "Anna! It's the police. They found Jim and Aimee, and they're okay, they're bringing them back here right now."

Alex lifted the receiver to his head again. "We've been trying to call all night. We're trying to track down two more people - Aidan Fox and Jake Foley. Have you heard anything about them? Okay... Okay, thank you. But... okay."

He lowered the phone again with a sigh and met Anna's eyes. "She didn't know anything about Aidan or Jake."

[Anna Fernandez]

"That should reassure me, but it doesn't," Anna said, her fingers separating the beads on her rosary one by one but her brain was refusing to form any coherent prayers. El Espíritu de Dios intercede por nosotros con gemidos indecibles ...

"What on earth were Jim and Aimee doing that they got picked up by the police?" She paced the floor, looking up briefly as someone on the second floor walked across their room, and then at Alex. He looked like a kid desperately trying to be an grown-up, and the worry behind his eyes helped snap her out of her funk.

She couldn't lean on Alex. She was the adult here. Anna tried on a reassuring smile, and hoped the intent got through to Alex. "They will be here soon and there will be more answers."

A car drove by outside and her head snapped around, but it continued on down the street. Just a few more minutes... Her fingers passed another bead between them and reached for the next.

[Shield]

At long last the cruiser swung into a familiar neighborhood of looping streets and tightly packed houses, and within a minute it had glided to a stop on Banyon Street in front of Redención House. The porch lights were on, and the first floor was conspicuously bright, which was rare this late on a weeknight.

The driver of the car was tall and thin, with a generous sprinkling of silver in his hair and his mustache. He looked for the kids' eyes in his rear-view mirror and announced, "Looks like our stop. I know you two are probably exhausted, but we'll need to have a word with you and Miss Fernandez before we leave."

The officer pulled a notebook and pen from the center console and led the way up to the front door with Aimee and Jim trailing meekly behind. He pressed the doorbell, found it didn't work, and knocked solidly on the door.

[Aimee Connors]

Aimee hugged her arms around her body as they walked up to the door, her bravado slipping as facing Anna Fernandez and her disappointment came closer and closer. The officer in front knocked, and the door opened almost immediately, Anna standing there with worry lines in her forehead.

"Oh thank God," she said in her accented English, stepping out onto the porch. "Jim, Aimee - I'm so glad you're safe." Anna looked like she wanted to sweep both of them up in a hug, but instead she pulled her light cardigan tight around her huge belly. She turned from them toward the two officers. "What on earth happened? They weren't very forthcoming on the phone."

"We picked up these two outside the warehouse fire -" Anna's face got pale, Aimee noticed, but the woman held herself together and the officer kept talking, outlining how they'd been found and the story that they had told. Aimee shuffled her feet a bit.

[Jim Lewinski]

In the dim light that spilled out onto the porch, Jim waited. The dialogue unfolding between Anna and the policeman was of small interest to him; he had already considered her wrath, and its myriad consequences; whereupon he took the precaution to deliberate his next potential port of call, in the event of him being banished outright from the house. His finances were limited, but not so short to prevent him returning to the east coast. He was consequently unconcerned with the logistics of his immediate future. What bothered him was the conflict of feelings that swelled up inside of him at the sight of the mutant matriarch. The flicker of relief with which she greeted their appearance was buried swiftly beneath a hard white mask cracked with worry. It troubled him to consider that he and Aimee had it within them to lay to bed at least some of her fears, but for what? To give rise to whole new fears? Or worse, to betray their rescuers? No, that was inconceivable.

"-and, given their story, it sounds like the warehouse and those arrested may be connected to the recent reports of mutant disappearances in the area. Your kids were very lucky, ma'am."

The moustachioed officer was, whether consciously or not, making a solid case for their innocence in the matter. When he got to the part about how they had been snatched cycling to Dairy Queen, a masochistic fabrication of Aimee's design, Jim wilted. Sour thoughts surfaced from the murky depths of anxiety and guilt. Once again, he was at the mercy of police protocol. Anna talked while the officer took notes, and Jim, incapable of disguising his irritation a moment longer, started to furiously twitch. The wait was agonising.

[Anna Fernandez]

"Thank you for bringing them home," Anna said quietly.

"You're welcome ma'am." The policeman, Officer Bell, seemed almost apologetic as he added, "Because of what happened, and the fact that these kids are homeless teens, we had to call Child Protective Services. Standard procedure."

"I understand," she said, inwardly cringing.

"Their case officer will be by in the morning," Bell said. "I'm sorry to keep you up so late, Miss Fernandez. We'll have a patrol car swing through the neighborhood, just in case."

"Thank you, that is reassuring." Anna reached for the screen door, ready to go inside and be done with this conversation. "I thank you again -"

"I'm sorry," said the second officer, "Just one more question. Dispatch mentioned that you asked about two other people when they called to tell you we were bringing Aimee and Jim home." He looked down at a piece of paper in his hand. "Aidan Fox and Jacob Foley?"

He looked up. "Are they still missing? If you can give us a description of them we'll be sure to keep an eye out."

"Oh," she said, suddenly feeling that the officer's friendly and helpful interest was anything but. A woman's sixth sense, her mother had often told her, was like a mutant power on it's own. Anna got a bit of mental vertigo, as though she was standing on the edge if a cliff she didn't quite know existed. "Ah, that was one of the teens who live here who answered the phone. I'm sure they are fine, I think Aidan was working late tonight and Jake is picking him up. His schedule changes all the time."

The words came out as though someone else was saying them. Why was she lying? Anna turned to Aimee and Jim, and opened the screen door. "These kids need showers and a good night sleep, I thank you for bringing them back home, officers." The purple girl darted inside, Jim not far behind, his jitters making him almost look blurry.

[Alex Kaine]

Alex lingered as close to the door as he dared while Anna dealt with the cops, not wanting to risk betraying anything, or anyone, in a situation he didn't understand. The fact that the cops didn't know anything about Aidan or Jake told him a lot. Mainly, that Aimee and Jim hadn't said anything about them.

His mind's eye went back to the swirling blue flames engulfing the factory, and he felt his head spinning. He pressed back against the bay window as Aimee and Jim slipped in through the front door. He didn't need to say a word - they could see the news footage on the TV screen behind him.

"We're just glad they're safe," Officer Bell replied. "If they remember any more details about tonight, we'd be much obliged if you could share them. Chances are we'll be back this way again to ask some more questions once we're further with our investigation. Do you have any more questions for us?"

Anna didn't. Not for the police, anyway, and Alex guessed they knew that as well as he did. It wasn't too hard to read between the lines: the cops weren't satisfied with the story they'd gotten, and they believed Aimee and Jim would be more forthcoming with Anna. As far as Alex was concerned, the two officers couldn't leave fast enough.

But when they did, and when the door latched shut against the boiling night air, the cloud of tension suffusing the house hadn't budged one bit. Jen leaned over the back of the couch, doe-eyes darting between Aimee and Anna, while Alex smoldered over by the bay window, staring holes into Jim. Finally he could stand it no longer.

"What happened?"

[Jim Lewinski]

Jim advanced into the living room, leaving Aimee to await her judgement like an obedient pup. He had not the patience for it. First, he had eyes only for the television, the light from which at times blazed bright enough to scorch the wallpaper. It was surreal to see the warehouse burning safely within the confines of the screen, and the roar of flames reduced to a murmured backdrop to the newscaster's drone. On the periphery of his thoughts, he noted a question and the sound of approaching footsteps; Alex was no fool and to Anna he owed a tremendous debt of gratitude – he faced a minefield of moral ambiguity. One last time, he considered his options; they took shape, branching off into multitudinous possibilities, like the map of some convoluted subway network, which he unfurled and studied in search of the most agreeable route. But, no matter the destination, his findings were always the same: there were no black or white consequences anymore.

“It's exactly as it looks.”

His words, coupled with the steely glance he had just fired his roommate's way, were loaded with subtext. The facts were already there; four people missing, two rescued from a burning warehouse along with a number of known gangbangers, the warehouse burned blue, and the remaining two were still conspicuously absent. Anyone with half a brain could parse the meaning between the words and the look, hence Jim was unconcerned that it had also been witnessed by Jen. Not missing a beat, he spun, arms outstreched like a falling sycamore seed, to face Anna, who had by that time closed in.

“We were snatched by Three Eleven scumbags, and taken to the warehouse. There was a fire, we got out, and no, before you ask, we ain't got no clue where you'll find Aidan or Jake.”

The question, that had already taken shape on Anna's lips, was swiftly deflated. She looked troubled and, while he didn't like it, Jim was spared feeling completely wretched for what he'd said was, afterall, the truth.

[Aimee Connors]

Aimee was suddenly exhausted, and she would have collapsed onto the couch if she hadn't been so grimy from smoke. "Can we do this later, Alex? I just want to go take a shower." She looked at Anna, who's forehead was creased with worry lines, and the pregnant woman nodded.

"Thanks," she managed, turning and heading for the stairs before she could think too hard about the replay of the blue warehouse fire playing on the TV, and the moment of looking back at Jake and Aidan in the midst of the burning building. She dashed the tears from her eyes as she ran up the stairs, headed for the sanctuary of the bathroom.

[Anna Fernandez]

Aimee disappeared to the second floor, and Anna met Jim's eyes. He was completely defensive, his body language more than a little aggressive, and she knew she wasn't going to get to the bottom of this tonight. "I believe you," she said softly. "You should get cleaned up, too. Use my shower, there's should be enough hot water." She put her hand on his shoulder and squeezed gently beforehand releasing him.

She sighed then, remembering something. "Your parents will probably not be notified, Jim, since you weren't arrested, but if you want to call them...?"

[Jim Lewinski]

"No," Jim was quick to respond, "Nothin' they need to know."

He hesitated at the foot of the staircase, took one glance back at Anna, who drifted like a ghost into the living room, and then, steeling himself, he retreated upstairs. It was far from over.

[Anna Fernandez]

Anna sighed as the two teens disappeared upstairs, and walked into the kitchen to pour herself a glass of pink lemonade. After a moment she added three ice cubes to the glass, and sat down at the table. She took a sip, then folded her arms on the table and rested her forehead on it, her mind full of worry for Jake, and Aidan.

She sat there in silence, praying without ceasing, not even knowing what she should ask for.

[Jennifer Cho]

In the living room Jen mouthed to Alex, should we go talk to her? pointing toward the kitchen, or them? jabbing a hand at the ceiling. Or... she shrugged, not sure if she was expected to simply go to bed with such exciting things happening. Being a mimic was hardly a useful ability when people were missing, unless one needed to pretend to be someone else on the phone in order to find them.

Which seemed...unlikely. She gave up on Alex, who seemed to be lost somewhere in Un-Fun-Furrowed-Brow-Land, and flopped onto the couch.

[Alex Kaine]

The iron-hard look that Jim had sent him left Alex rooted with his hand knuckling the back of the couch. There had been wavelengths there that were so far outside his experience with Jim that he had difficulty classifying them, like spectral lines of a mysterious element, reactive and unpredictable. Aimee was behaving to type, defensive and cagey after a brush with the law. But Jim hadn't stammered, hadn't panicked, hadn't prevaricated. It was like something had burned away in the factory fire. Or maybe something new had been forged.

Alex glanced over toward Jen on the couch, then started for the stairs. "Stay with Anna. I'm going to try to talk to Jim."

[Aidan Fox]

Aidan had lost track of the time. He knew it was somewhere north of midnight and south of morning, but the Angelino sky was a frozen brown fog shocked by billboard lamps and street lights, unchanging from dusk til dawn, and he wasn't thinking in terms of hours and minutes. He was counting blocks and alleyways, marking the street signs and scanning the tags scrawled on concrete walls and dumpsters, all the while charting their course like a GPS and calculating the minimum safe distance from the scene of the crime, from police routes, from gang nests. It was immediate and tactical, and it helped keep his mind off of less comfortable things.

He and Jake had barely spoken five words to each other since since they'd left the factory in West Carson. The silence between them was enormous and menacing, like a beast stalking them from the slanted shadows of the back alleys, a creature made of primal, unreasoning fear just like the one they'd slain together on the factory floor, but this one couldn't be sealed away, couldn't be eluded. They would need to stop walking soon, and then they would need to confront the insanity of the last few hours.

They passed in front of the entrance to a sad, sagging two-story motel with a parking lot full of minced pavement and empty of cars. Aidan knew La Raza maintained the room at the end of the first floor as an emergency safehouse, which was scarcely more illicit than what the other rooms were used for. "This'll do," he rasped. "Just need to get off our feet for a couple minutes."

He had no key, but the latch on the door gave way after some creative leveraging with a credit card, admitting them into a dark space of peeling wallpaper and furniture shored up with duct tape. Aidan stepped in, turned on a small desk lamp, and carefully eased himself into a decrepit armchair, pale and haggard in the dull yellow light. His eyes closed immediately, and his head lolled to the side.

He shook himself and looked in Jake's general vicinity. "We ought to give Anna a call," he mumbled. "Let her know how we're doing."

[Jacob Foley]

"Tell her we're alive, you mean."

Jake skulked the limited periphery of the room, inspecting the dark corners, the empty bathroom, like a wary stray prowling the back streets at night. The air inside was close and quite rancid from the smell of damp wood and empty beer cans. On the bedside stand there was a small half-empty bottle of aspirin, Jake reached out then thought better of it, for in such an unsavoury place, and without the means to divine its true contents, it was better to be safe than sorry. He sat at the foot of the bed, the matress dipped with a groan of springs, and considered Aidan's proposal. Anna would have questions, hard questions, and, if they were going to call, they needed to have answers.

It seemed so long ago, and so far removed from their present situation, when they first sat and discussed over beers their options for protecting the house and its inhabitants. Months later, they were once again faced with another important decision to make, except this time there was a notable shortage of options on the table. They had built a house of cards upon a foundation of lies and were holding their breath. And yet, despite the reality of being swamped up to his neck in such a moral quandry, Jake was inwardly, and silently, wrestling with another demon. It was a persistant needling menace, feeding fat his doubts, and unravelling what was beginning to feel like a very tentative grasp on his own sanity. He repeated Aidan's words in his head and snorted in amusement at his own absolute uncertainty. It was another hard question for which he looked to his enigmatic friend for the answers.

"How are we doing again, Aidan?"

[Aidan Fox]

"Alive's a good start."

Aidan rubbed wearily at his forehead, then found his hand smeared with soot. If they were in decent places, he'd find a steaming shower head to stand under until the ashes washed away, until he no longer looked and smelled like the remnants of a tire fire, and then he'd collapse into a soft bed and sleep for ten hours of blissful oblivion. But the shower here would spit out gobs of stinking, rusty water if it gave anything at all, and this was not a neighborhood to be caught sleeping. Dozing, perhaps. Cat-napping. Surely he could steal a few minutes out of the small hours of the morning.

His head lolled against his shoulder, and he began to snore.

[Jacob Foley]

There was not an ounce of comfort to be wrung from Aidan's lean choice of words. Jake rose, and paced in frustration. Away from the fire and the sirens, the implications of his actions crashed around him in their dingy little hole. It stirred up in him a panic that parched his mouth and snatched his breath. He was haunted not by thoughts of the authorities, with their cruel shackles and cold prison bars, or the knives and bullets of gangbangers, but by the face of his sister, wilted and hard from his betrayal. Anna, whose dark beauty had in recent days turned pale, and whose youthful skin had in places dried up like old parchment, she worried like mother. And on each fresh line he saw his own story written; every fault, every failure; he was malignant, like a cancer on her life.

"Before we call, we need to get our stories straight. I mean how much of this can we keep from her now, Aidan? Aidan?"

At first statuesque in his disbelief, Jake watched his sleeping friend. In the silence and the gloom, fatigue seeped into his muscles and encroached like a drunken haze upon the mind, beckoning him to rest every aching limb. It was the toll of the evening's exertions, and he felt it as surely did Aidan. Yet he was awake, driven halfway to madness with uncertainty, with questions and self-doubt. Aidan had the answers, and when the first snore rattled in his throat, Jake descended on him like a falcon. Talon fingers clamped into his shoulders as he shook him awake, hissing with anger:

"Don't you fucking zone out on me, Aidan! Not now! The clock is ticking, man, and I want answers!"

[Aidan Fox]

"Gah!"

Aidan came awake grappling and wild-eyed, as if he'd managed to sink into a nightmare in the few seconds since he'd drifted off. For a moment, he tried to throw Jake off of him, but he had no leverage, and his friend's grip was ironclad. He wasn't going anywhere.

He took a few gasping breaths and sank back into the quilted surface of the armchair, eyes hooded, face drawn and defeated. "I'm out of answers, Jake," he said. "I'm fresh out of ideas. You don't want me talking to Anna now. I'm liable to slip up and tell the truth for once."

[Jacob Foley]

"The truth?" Jake snorted with derision. He released Aidan and retreated to give himself a moment to calm down. The motel had walls like cardboard and there was no telling who inhabited the neighbouring rooms. On the spot he turned, stiff with agitation, shaking off a mirthless grin. Once he was facing Aidan again, he folded his arms, and fired him a look full of challenge.

"Alright, then speak to me," he said, in an undertone, "Because I just saw you fight some sort of interdimensional monster and closed a portal to the... Astral Plane! How do you even know about this stuff, Aidan? And how did it get into the house? Look, I trust you, man, and I promised that I'd never pry. But after tonight? You're making it seriously fucking hard!"

[Aidan Fox]

It wasn't as if Aidan didn't know this was coming. Honestly, he was amazed it had taken this long. It was one thing to put up with a man's secrets because he was useful, because the calculus of risks and benefits came out on the side of silence. But after slogging with him through the underbelly of Los Santos, after making a habit of risking his life and lying to the people he loved most, Jake had trusted him - still trusted him, just hours after Aidan's schemes had put Jim and Aimee in danger, blown up a whole factory, and dragged them both as close to literal hellfire as any living human being could come. That kind of faith was reserved for saints and heroes, and Aidan didn't feel worthy of it.

"I don't know how that thing got into the House," he said in a quiet voice. That was the easy part - simple, unhelpful, and even true. But it wasn't enough by a long shot, and even without psychic abilities he could sense Jake's impatience boiling just underneath his skin.

Aidan pushed his hand back through his dirty, ash-clogged hair and stared up at the ceiling so he wouldn't have to meet Jake's accusing eyes. "I don't think the creature in Jamie's room has anything to do with what we saw tonight. What happened tonight was my fault. Because I got careless. Because I know secrets nobody should know, and if I share them with you, you'll be in just as much danger as I am. Damn it, Jake, I don't know what to do!"

[Jacob Foley]

"You can start by having some faith in me."

Now a step ahead of Aidan, Jake lifted his hand to intercept the incoming objection. He didn't want to hear it. Also, a moment of silence was exactly what he needed to process Aidan's words. It was a startling revelation for two reasons: first, Aidan always knew what to do, and secondly, he'd never admit it if he didn't. He was that kind of guy; where Jake would bitch and rant and sulk about his problems, Aidan just found a way to sort them out. So that he made such a confession spoke volumes about both the severity of their circumstances and the great burden of his secrets. They had reached a precipice, Jake felt it as surely as the ground beneath his feet. On the periphery of his thoughts loomed Anna and the spectre of his guilt; there was a dead end up ahead, and no side streets or shady back alleys to slip away, but first, before all that, one final plunge into the rabbit hole.

"It's not like I've never put my neck on the line with you before," he said, pinching at his charred shirt, "We're in this together, Aidan. The whole thing. And if we're going to figure a way out of this mess, you're going to have to level with me, man. You need to trust me."

[Aidan Fox]

It made so much sense when you put it that way. Because they'd already made enemies of the Tres Onces, the Smoke Man, and possibly their contacts in the Jericho Network, and it was hard to see how a little extra information could make any of that worse. Knowledge couldn't hurt you. That's what Aidan thought, once, before he knew about the Astral Plane, a whole universe where thought was reality, where monsters lived that preyed on the mind. If only it was that simple. If only...

Maybe it was. Jake may have been wrestling with his own demons, but he'd still found the strength to vanquish one of Aidan's. And it wasn't too hard to see who had come out of that encounter the stronger of the two.

Aidan gripped the pommels of his armrests and launched himself to his feet, then went staggering past Jake into the dingy little bathroom. There he twisted open the faucet, which belched out a few spurts of water and sediment, then settled into a clear stream. Aidan splashed his face with it, then wiped away some of the grime on a paper towel square.

He turned in the doorway to face Jake. "You could've looked for answers anytime you wanted," he said. "You respected my privacy. I can't thank you enough for that, Jake. But now I'm going to ask you to open up and read me. I need you to know that I'm telling you the truth, and, trust me, it's not going to be easy to believe."

[Jacob Foley]

"Okay..."

Jake stared, slack-jawed and stupefied. In his hesitation he bobbed, almost imperceptibly, on the spot, shifting his balance from foot to foot. Even though he'd been granted permission to go ahead and read Aidan's mind, after all that time and all that restraint, the thought of it struck him as rather perverse, not unlike the feeling of uncertainty which accompanied his first ever alcoholic beverage in the company of his parents. And in much the same way, he feared that, once the deed was done, Aidan was going to suddenly explode in a fit of outrage at such a monstrous betrayal. When it finally became clear, after an awkward elongated silence, that his friend had no caveats or conditions up his sleeve, Jake gave a stiff nod.

"Okay," he said again, and returned to his seat at the foot of the bed, "I get the feeling I want to be sitting down for this."

[Aidan Fox]

"Might not be a bad idea."

Aidan leaned against the doorframe and turned his eyes across the room, wondering whether the brownish glow in the window shades was dawn or just the parking lot lamps. Now that he knew the walls of secrecy were coming down, he was calm, almost meditative. All he had to do now was remember how to tell the truth.

"So, I used to... I was part of..."

He frowned at the false start, backed up, and rearranged his thoughts.

"Remember how I told you I've spent time with a lot of mutants over the years?" he said. "One of them was a psychic. One of the most phenomenally gifted psychics in the world. She mastered the Astral Plane in a way no one else could. Used it to see things happening all over the world. She could even use it to look through time."

He managed to meet Jake's eyes, eyebrows crimped, face hard and guarded. "There's history being made in Los Santos, Jake. Registration. The Jericho Centers. Genetic warfare. It's happening around the world, but this is one of the flashpoints. And it's going to get worse, a lot worse, unless someone does something about it. And that's why she sent me here. To change history."

[Jacob Foley]

While Aidan spoke, Jake made a deliberate effort not to so much as twitch or even breath too loudly for fear of spooking his friend, as if he was some sort of timid gazelle ready to dart off at the first sign of danger. It was not in his nature to be such a shameless busybody, in fact, few people interested him enough to actively care about their personal lives, but Aidan was different, he was a good friend, and he had the answers to questions which could no longer be ignored.

First, there was mention of a psychic, which was surprising only in so far as her significance to his tale. Aidan used his previous experience with psychics to help Jake overcome his own psychic difficulties, although he'd neglected to mention his psychic friend had been quite so powerful. What was said of Los Santos and unfolding events, Jake found himself nodding in agreement. However, where he and his fellow mutants appeared to have drawn the short straws with their lot, it seemed that Aidan's presence wasn't entirely accidental, or anywhere near as unfortunate. No, it was more than that. Whoever this powerful psychic was, she'd sent him to Los Santos to make a difference. This was a mission to him. Jake frowned as he tried to parse the unspoken truths between Aidan's lofty claims. He shrugged.

"So you're what... like a G-Man or something?"

[Aidan Fox]

"You're not too far off, actually."

A grin flickered at the corners of Aidan's mouth, and a series of memories flashed by too fast for Jake to follow, but they included images of men and women in uniform, and not any uniform he knew. Form-fitting, built to move, woven from some kind of high-tech materials. Some were flying. Some were performing superhuman feats of strength. One was blasting waves of luminous energy from her fingertips. Mutants.

"We don't work for the government, though," he said. "We try to make the world a safer place. For mutants and humans. Sometimes it means standing up to bigots like the Tres Onces. Sometimes it means fighting other mutants."

Aidan sobered again as his thoughts turned darker. "There's one group of mutants in particular we're trying to stop. They're worse than the government. Worse than the Brotherhood of Mutants. They don't see mutation as a gift, or as a birthright, they see it as a weapon, and they want to use it to wage war. And where I come from, they've already succeeded."

His fingers clawed at the doorjamb behind him, like he was bracing for something, something that could bring the whole building down around them. "When I said I was trying to change history, I meant it. My history. The reason I've never told anyone about my past is that it hasn't happened yet.

"I'm from the future, Jake."

[Jacob Foley]

Under the deluge of information, Jake could barely hold Aidan's gaze. The mystery - which had, for as long as they'd known each other, been Aidan's second skin - it was peeled away, layer by layer, until his friend was gone, and in his place stood a stranger wearing the same face. What made it so difficult, much more so than the unfathomable science of it all, was the absolute deconstruction of his own concept of reality. It happened so suddenly, and because he'd been reading Aidan all along, there was no room for doubt. He hated that. No time to play the sceptic or hope for a punchline. It was the truth and, just like that, he knew it like Aidan knew it. What a terrible gift.

"Jesus Christ! You're not kidding..." he said at last, it was barely an exhale. Perched as he was on the edge of the bed, Jake folded himself fetal, elbows on his knees, his face in his hands. In prayer, perhaps, at a glance. Beneath the surface, his insides rebelled, and there was a very real risk of them being emptied there on the floor. He took a long rasping breath, and uttered: "I really wish you were."

What was most nauseating was the indisputable nature of what he'd experienced. The things he saw, of people, and places, and highly-questionable fashion, it was all real, or would be real, or at least, had once been real for Aidan. The technicalities were unimportant. He wondered what those revelations said of him, and his family, and his time. Where Aidan came from, this had already happened, he had happened. And while Jake had never given much thought to his own place in the grand scheme of things, or his own importance for that matter, to have his entire timeline reduced to a historical footnote like that was disorientating to say the least. In truth, it felt like someone had pulled the earth from under his feet. It was a strange time to have a crisis of identity, given everything he'd just been told, but at that moment, farthest from his mind were thoughts of Aidan's newly-revealed purpose and the overwhelming weight of things to come.

When at last he surfaced, it was to fumble about in his jacket pocket for his cigarettes. One was plucked from the crumpled packet and extended to Aidan, who, understanding, lit the end with a touch of his finger. First, Jake took a long drag, then, when the bud was prized from his lips, there was a ghost of a smile.

"You should've gone to the Sixties, man."

[Aidan Fox]

Aidan laughed at that - probably more than he should have. In the wake of that revelation, he was feeling a little lightheaded himself.

"The Sixties are next. I could use a vacation."

[Jacob Foley]

Given his newly-endorsed psychic freedom, Jake found himself nodding in agreement, in sympathy even, with Aidan's words. It couldn't be easy, what he did; the responsibility, the risk, the loneliness, Jake understood, at least as well a person from his era could understand. It was a job deserving of some quality down-time. And he sensed the relief rolling off his friend in waves; relief, presumably, from being able to finally unload his solitary burden of secrecy. So he took his time, and smoked, granting his thoughts room to breathe and digest the revelation and the fresh light it shed upon... everything.

It changed everything, and wasn't that the point of it? That's why Aidan was standing in the room with him at that very moment, he was an agent of change, and, even in the future, Jake imagined that wasn't the sort of role that popped up in job centers. This thing was a vocation for him then, a calling, and surely nothing short of that could convince a grown man to dress like that. Another smirk, he would have fun with that. How much his friend had changed before his eyes, and yet, somehow, he was still the same Aidan. Aidan, the grease monkey with a tin ear and gasoline for blood, who knew more than was healthy about football statistics, yet was incapable of naming two members of the cast of Friends - now a forgivable, if disheartening, oversight. And despite the fact that Aidan was proven to be a better liar than even him, he was nevertheless a good man, and that was what counted.

"It's a hell of a gig," he said at last, with a shake of the head, "Are there more like you back home? The time-traveling vigilante sorts?"

[Aidan Fox]

Aidan shook his head. "No. Not that I know of, anyway. Hell, I didn't even know it was possible until I took the trip myself."

He knew Jake's head would be filling with questions of every description, and some that probably defied description. Part of him just wanted to let his friend explore - whether LA was getting another NFL team, what stocks he should invest in, even what mutant rights looked like over the next twenty-five years. He could imagine kicking back on a couch with a couple of beers and a Dodgers game droning in the background while they talked about the future's history. It would almost be normal. But they didn't have that luxury. Dawn was approaching, and Anna and the kids were waiting, and they still had the events of the past six hours, and more, to answer for.

"There's a machine," Aidan explained, "that allows people to physically enter the Astral Plane. Yeah, seems like a contradiction, I don't know the first thing about how it works. Once I was in, my psychic friend was able to send me back into the past. But the Astral demons knew I didn't belong here, and they tried to stop us. Almost did. Those things can hold a grudge, and if they get half a chance, they'll destroy me and anyone else who knows what I know. That's one of the reasons I couldn't tell anyone. Not even you."

His gaze dropped to the floor. "I swear to God I don't know how that demon got into Jamie's room. I don't know if it was trying to get to me through her, or if it was just tormenting her for the hell of it. I just hope they know better than to try again."

[Jacob Foley]

"Wait a minute," Jake said. It was a false start. In silence, he mulled over his words, and thoughts, in an attempt to engage Aidan on an equal footing. Then his eyes narrowed.

"The demon in the factory - you said that was your fault. You said you got careless. How does that work?"

In the moment Aidan's gaze met his, the answer stood out as clear as day. Not that it helped Jake's comprehension of events. And when he next spoke, he couldn't quite keep the distaste off his tongue:

"Julio?"

[Aidan Fox]

Aidan stepped over toward the window and pulled back the tattered edges of the curtains. The streetlight glare stung his eyes, but the sky, or what he could see of it, was still an opaque black shroud. There was no sign of life from the parking lot, and even the rumble of traffic was just barely audible through the motel's paper-thin walls. Even in the small hours of the morning, quiet like this was a rare thing in Los Santos. It meant that for the present, they still had time, and he had no excuse not to keep telling Jake the truth.

"I thought killing Julio wouldn't have that big an impact," he said. "A middle-rung gangbanger, lives dangerously, just as easily could have died in a shootout or a drug overdose. But he's still a human being, and his life touched thousands of others, for better or for worse. I cut all those threads in an instant."

He turned back to face Jake. "It's not about whether I made the world better or worse. Making a change that big all at once - it's like putting all your weight on one spot on a frozen pond. Something's going to crack. It tore open a rift straight to the Astral Plane, and if we hadn't closed it, those things could be all over Los Angeles by now. I've been trying to work indirectly, get other people involved, spread out the changes. It's one thing to change the borders in a gang war. It's another to take a life. Or to save one."

[Jacob Foley]

It was out of courtesy, and a considerable dosage of humility, that Jake didn't question Aidan's logic. He was the time-traveller and, in his renewed estimation, the authority on the subject. All those quantum and theoretical physicists be damned, what with their roundabout debates over temporal paradoxes and other things he didn't understand. What stood before him was real, and, in that moment, he needed to hold onto something that was tangible and real. Then, at the mention of the portal, there was a spark of recognition. The frozen pond analogy was apt. He knew, first hand, of the tenuous veil which separated his world from the world of monsters. He had touched it with his own mind, manipulated it, the place of horrors and thoughts, and watched it vanish as if it had never existed in the first place. But Jake knew better. And for the first time, he considered that terrible knowledge, which he could never unlearn; a world overlapping with his own, divided by boundaries that only truly existed in the mind, with its nightmare creatures pressing, probing for a fracture, to bleed onto the other side.

Jake hugged himself for warmth and rubbed feeling back into his arms. There was no ventilation inside their musty motel room, it was as if the air had solidified around them, frozen in the thick of the night. Aidan was talking about his cause - something about affecting change little by little, but he could make no real sense of it, the intricacies of manipulating a sanguineous turf war for future gain were beyond his realm of comprehension. It seemed so much simpler when they were just trying to protect the house. But it had never been about the house, or his family. The thought took root and coursed, quickly, like poison through his mind. And then, just as he found himself on the cusp of challenging his elusive friend, something happened. On the surface it was nothing, inconsequential, unworthy of a second thought from even the most veteran of interrogators. But to a telepath, like Jake, what Aidan had just done felt like a spooked horse rearing up from under him, then with that same tremendous power, bucking, as if to dislodge him from his very thoughts. And, in that, his efforts were a success. Aidan was once again a closed book.

"What?" Jake looked up, and what were once the wavelengths of understanding shared in a glance between friends were now glaring elements of apprehension and alarm. He stood.

"Aidan, what aren't you telling me?"

[Aidan Fox]

There were ways to resist a telepath. You could throw up a barrier of competing images, nonsense words, music, focus your mind on anything but the topic you wanted to hide. But that was only really a smokescreen, and a gifted psychic could push his way through if he really wanted to, sometimes with painful and destructive results.

For Aidan, it was reflex. Even after all the confessions, all the lines he'd crossed in the past five minutes, he huddled over this secret as if he were protecting a wound.

"Jake... the more you know about the future, the more history is going to change because of you. I almost unleashed hell on south LA; if I tell you everything, I'm doubling the chances it'll happen again."

Images of war flashed across Aidan's consciousness. Ruined buildings split into skeletons of concrete and rebar, smoking rubble sliding like avalanches into the streets, enormous machines rolling over the shattered remains of houses, parks, and people. And then, before he could stop it, a woman's voice repeating a phrase: The mother and child.

[Jacob Foley]

"The mother and child?" The words tumbled out barely more than a whisper, but Aidan had heard them clearly enough, for they seemed to fill the entire room, "All that power. All that time. You didn't just trip over the house on the way to your great destinty, did you?"

The mask had slipped, and beneath it, an unmistakeable flicker of fear. Jake bristled, affording his friend a heartbeat to come clean. And then he moved. In two great purposeful strides he was in Aidan's face, and braced him against the wall with one hand clamped firmly upon his shoulder. This time his question became a demand.

"The mother and child!"

[Aidan Fox]

Aidan gripped Jake's arms but didn't try to throw him off. He didn't want another fight on his hands. Wasn't sure if he had the strength for it right now. All he could do was struggle to put his tortured thoughts into some kind of order and try to plot a course out of this mess he'd sailed into. For him, this was history. For everyone else, it was the coarse reality of daily life, the slow and uncertain process of turning the future into the present with nothing but their hopes and fears to guide them. How was he supposed to know any better than them? What kind of hubris did it take to sit back and pull the strings that made up the tapestry of their existence, as if he had a better idea of how to weave it?

The truth was, he didn't. And he never had. You didn't rewrite history from the outside. Aidan knew that. And that meant that, now, Jake did, too.

"It was never a complicated plan, Jake," he said. "It wasn't about changing the government, or starting a movement. It was about saving a life."

His mind returned (http://www.sw-fans.net/forum/showthread.php?21636-For-A-Good-Year&p=356982&viewfull=1#post356982) inexorably to that quiet morning in the kitchen, just him, Tess, and Anna, when he'd heard the news for the first time. Jake went there, too, and Aidan could feel his grip weaken.

"And now it's about saving two lives."

[Jacob Foley]

Although Jake's hold on Aidan weakened, he did not fully relinquish his grip. In that moment, there was no certainty he could stand under his own power. Bearing the weight of the latest crushing revelation felt as real to him as an actual feat of physical strength. His breathing was laboured and there was an unquiet fire in his eyes. He was angry... at who or what, he did not know. Aidan, for his deception; himself, for being a fool; or perhaps some external tormentor, in whose wicked machinations they were all naught but pawns. It was childish directionless anger, which could only be turned inwards to wage a war against himself. And there was so little fight left in him. Aidan's penetrating words found no place of purchase in the foggy corners of his mind; they were alien, intangible; as abstract from his thoughts as oil from water. Whatever was resonating deep within was a feeling, coursing through his body like a virus, small and devastating. He couldn't think. Rational thought was a foreign land.

He pushed himself away from Aidan, and retreated on leaden feet. Turning, he wandered listlessly into the bathroom. There, in the silence and gloom, thoughts started to surface from the murk. At first, it was an exercise in self-deception: divining meaning from vague concepts to arrive at the most pleasing conclusions, like picturing shapes in the clouds. Making sense of time-travel would have that effect, he consoled himself. One idea, however, took root. Aidan came from a place where the worst had already happened. It became entrenched in his mind; unshakeable, because it was a reality. Aidan's reality: a place where he had failed as a brother. His eyes were stinging, and wet. The sound of the sputtering faucet spared his shame. And in the moment it took to compose himself, Jake remembered something Aidan said to him: the more he knew, the more history would change because of him. Damn right.

He washed the scorch marks from his face, and returned to Aidan.

"Dude, we need to go home. Anna will be waiting."