Chapter 3

"Thank god that's over," I muttered under my breath as I walked out the front doors of Winslow High. Despite my best efforts, the tension that had steadily settled into my shoulders and neck refused to relax. A steady stream of people filled the street in both directions, heading off to do whatever they did after school let out, and I caught myself absently noting which ones would have to die first when the crowd turned and rushed me.

An exhausted sigh slipped out of my throat and I forcibly derailed that train of thought.

The last few days had been hell. Between the teachers' incessant droning and my own complete inability to focus, school had been dragging on even worse than usual. I was mentally drained before the end of the third class every day. Add on to that the lingering awkwardness between me and my dad, and I felt like I was going to go insane. It had barely been three days since I'd gotten back from my last trip out to the woods and I already needed another one.

It was getting to be too much. I really needed someone to talk to, and thankfully I had just the thing. Hopefully.

A flick of my wrist pulled out my cell and I tapped out a number from memory. The ringtone started chirping in my ear as I stepped out of the doorway and leaned back against the wall beside it, where I was out of the way and able to keep an eye on the whole street. My phone repeated the ring three times before it was answered. Slow relief blossomed in my chest. Thank god. That meant she wasn't on duty.

"Hannah speaking," a smooth woman's voice, touched by the faintest hint of an accent I'd never been able to place, greeted me in a clipped, businesslike tone.

"Hey Hannah," I said, forcing the tiredness out of my voice through sheer force of will. My eyes automatically started tracking a group of thugs in predominantly red and green, the colors of the Azn Bad Boyz, a local pan-Asian gang more commonly called the ABB, as they came out the door. They walked right past me, chatting idly, so I just made note of them and moved on.

"Hello Taylor." Her voice was much more friendly when she responded. "How are you doing?"

"I'm fine." I shrugged despite knowing she couldn't see it. I tensed when I caught a flash of silver in the hands of one of the ABB members, but relaxed in the same heartbeat. It was only the idiot's cell phone. "Same as always. You?"

"I can't complain," she said. There was a hint of amusement in her tone. "There was a debacle the other day I'm still sorting out the paperwork for, but having the story behind it more than makes up for it."

That piqued my interest. "Oh?"

"Later," she said hurriedly. "It's a little too convoluted to share over the phone."

"Fair enough," I conceded. "In that case, are you doing anything right now?"

"Nothing that can't wait. Did you want to meet up?"

"That would be cool." I paused a moment in thought, trying to figure out a good meeting place for the time. "You up for a snack at that cafe off the Boardwalk?"

"I think I am," she agreed. "Meet there in half an hour?"

I ran quickly through the bus schedule and where the stops I needed were before nodding to myself. "That should work. See you there."

"Bye Taylor," she said and hung up.

A flick of my wrist had my phone stashed back in my pocket at the same moment a flex of my shoulders pushed me off the wall. My eyes swept over the crowd again. I absently noted the group of ABB thugs heading across the street, as well as the other dozen or so pockets of probable gang members that were slowly dispersing as well. None of them were paying me any attention though, so I shrugged and stepped into the the flow of bodies. The crowd of teenagers pressed in around me, a living tide of countless meaningless conversations and colorful clothes that slowly thinned as I got farther and farther from the school. Soon enough, it was only a small handful of students, none of which I recognized, and me at the bus stop.

It didn't take the bus long to arrive, and within a few minutes I was standing in the aisle holding the ceiling rail as it chugged along. The inside of the bus stank of burning diesel and stale urine, but I ignored it, just like the other eleven passengers. A low, even murmur of several conversations, just barely audible over the rumble of the engine, reached my ears. I watched the passengers out of one eye and tracked the bus' progress with the other, but none of the passengers so much as gave me a second look. The ride went by completely without incident.

I was almost used to that.

The bus dropped me off right on the edge of the Boardwalk, the overpriced tourist trap that was the only reason any outsiders still came to Brockton Bay. Garish, eye-catching storefronts lined the far side of the street to my left, while the wooden floor of the boardwalk proper stretched out over the beach and into the bay on my right. Brightly lit carnival-esque booths dotted the boardwalk in uneven rows, containing shops, games, and even a handful of small carnival rides, though I couldn't remember ever seeing any of the rides actually operating. Several tourists, obvious from their eager looks and way-too-expensive clothes, dotted the street in small groups. The grim, suited forms of the Boardwalk's enforcers could be seen lurking in the background, just waiting for an excuse to haul a stupid thief into the nearest alley and 'enforce' the rules of the Boardwalk.

As an obvious local and, worse, someone who obviously didn't have the kind of money to actually shop out here, I got more than my fair share of interest from the thinly-disguised thugs. Hostile, evaluating stares followed me the entire time I was out on the street. It made my trigger finger itch, and I had to fight the urge to duck behind cover every time I passed something that would do the job.

The enforcers left it at wary looks though, and I was able to keep my instinctive reactions under control until I turned off onto one of the side streets. I followed the road down a couple of blocks to a small cafe. A bell rang as I opened the door and stepped inside. It was a cozy place, barely larger than the living room of my house, with a glass display case and coffee machinery taking up almost a full third of that. Five round, two-to-four person tables were scattered around the remaining space at seeming random, and enough chairs were sitting around that it was nearly impossible to walk through the place without having to move at least one.

The cafe was empty when I walked in, aside from the thin, older asian woman standing behind the register. I ordered a cup of tea from her, paid, and brought the cup over to one of the tables. I'd barely sat down when the bell over the door chimed again and Hannah came strolling in.

Hannah was a fit older woman somewhere in her early 30s. She was olive-skinned, with a slender but clearly powerful build and a figure I'd gladly kill for. Her long, dark hair was styled the same way it always was; rolled up into a bun and held in place by a large, dark green knitting needle. Today, she was wearing a t-shirt and a pair of baggy sweatpants, but she moved with a smooth, almost predatory grace that made it seem like a suit of armor.

Which only made sense. Hannah was a member of the Parahuman Response Team, or PRT, the government agency responsible for dealing with parahuman criminals. She'd never said for sure, but based on her stories, I was pretty confident she was one of their field agents. We first met back in October, when she heard about Yamatai and decided to find me and make sure I knew I could talk to her. I'd been confused about why at first, but she'd eventually explained enough of her past for me to get it. She was born a Kurd in Turkey at a time when that was a very bad thing. I still didn't know much of the details, and I wasn't about to ask, but from what I did know, it was pretty obvious she'd ended up as a child soldier. I wasn't entirely sure how relevant that was to my 'adventure' on Yamatai, but she at least understood some of what I was dealing with. It wasn't perfect, but her efforts meant a lot to me.

Her dark eyes swept around the small shop and landed on me. I lifted my cup of tea in salute and Hannah flashed a small smile. She ordered something from the woman at the register and promptly sat down on the far side of my table, setting down a cup and a flaky pastry of some kind in front of her. The strong aroma of Turkish coffee filled my nose and I scowled at her.

"How the hell do you drink that stuff?"

"Practice," she said with a smile that bordered on a smirk. She took a slow, deliberate sip of the coffee and sighed contentedly. "Lots of practice."

"Whatever you say," I drawled with a shake of my head. I gave the coffee one last disgusted look and moved on. "You mentioned paperwork and a story earlier. What's going on there?"

Hannah's lips quivered, alternating between a scowl and a smirk so quickly that I couldn't tell what expression she was trying to make. She clearly found the story hilarious, and just as clearly thought she shouldn't. I leaned forward eagerly. I just knew this was going to be good. Her mouth opened, but she paused and her jaws closed with a final thud.

"No," she said with a shake of her head. She gave me a semi-apologetic glance. "Sorry, but I shouldn't. Can't," she quickly corrected herself. Her lips twitched into a half-smile, half-grimace. "It's not something I should spread."

"Aww c'mon," I groaned. She'd gotten my hopes up too. I put my hands together and did my best to look pathetic. I wanted to hear that story, damnit. "You can tell me, I won't tell anyone."

She glanced at me out of the corner of her eye and her lips twitched upward. "You don't pout very well."

"I figured," I said with a sigh. I let my face relax into a more normal expression. "So you're not gonna tell me after I came all the way out here?"

She paused, obviously torn on it. Her shoulders slumped and she blew out a heavy breath. "Fine," she relented. "But you're gonna promise not to tell anyone, alright?"

"Promise," I agreed immediately, a smile already rising to my lips. "If anyone finds out, it won't be from me."

She eyed me for a second or two, probably trying to judge my sincerity, before, after a shake of her head and a mutter under her breath, launching into her story.

"We had another run-in with Uber and Leet being, well, Uber and Leet," she told me. "We got a call a few days ago about their latest scheme and Armsmaster was dispatched to put a stop to it. When he got there, it turned out that they'd been the ones to call it in. They needed a hero to play the role of Pac-Man."

"Pac-Man?" I asked dryly. I didn't doubt her word, Uber and Leet were notoriously C-list villains whose whole schtick was video game themed crimes they filmed and published online. They were barely competent enough to notice, and no one took them seriously.

"Yes, Pac-Man," Hannah confirmed evenly. "When Armsmaster went into the warehouse they were occupying, he found out the whole place had been turned into a gigantic maze, and the door had locked behind him. He was forced to run through the maze and break the holographic orbs that filled it while fighting off a self-repairing 'ghost' robot the whole time."

I cocked an eyebrow at Hannah. After all the effort she'd made me go through to get this story, I was a little disappointed with it. "That isn't nearly as entertaining as you made it sound."

She shook her head. Once more, her lips started flickering between a grin and a scowl. "There's more to the story."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean the orbs Armsmaster was breaking weren't entirely holographic," she said. Her expression turned into an exaggerated scowl that was probably supposed to disguise the grin that was trying to fight its way out. I suddenly had the feeling this was going to end badly for the hero. "It turns out they'd been one of Leet's rare successful inventions. Every one he broke gave Armsmaster a mild dose of an unknown compound, probably another of Leet's inventions. It's harmless in the long-term, as far as we've been able to tell, but it's a powerful short-term hallucinogen. Miss Militia, my team, and I arrived twenty minutes after he called for backup, and we found him in an empty maze, on one knee and professing his undying love to his halberd."

"What." I couldn't believe what I'd heard. I heard the words and understood them, but putting them together in that order didn't make any sense. It was so outlandish, so ridiculous to imagine the man in that situation that I couldn't do it.

"That's how it happened," Jonah insisted. The fire cast dancing shadows across his massive frame. His tattoos seemed to crawl across his bare arms in the flickering orange light. The big Samoan gave me a wide smile and made a sweeping gesture with the skewer holding one of the chunks of deer he was cooking. His shoulders shook with barely-repressed laughter. "Th- the next morning, the old man came tearing out of his bunk in n-nothing but his underwear, swearing vengeance on all of us."

Sam finally lost the fight against her laughter and collapsed against me, guffawing directly into my ear. I flinched from the sound at first, but didn't let myself move too far. It felt good to hear an honest laugh after everything I'd been through the last few days.

"And he damn near did it too," Reyes said. Her smile was faint, distant, and sad. "Roth barely managed to talk him down." She shook her head. "I do not want to know what he had planned. That old man could get mean."

"That he could," Jonah said fondly. "He was a fighter, Grim was."

"Yeah," I muttered distractedly, hugging my knees tighter. I couldn't muster up anywhere near the cheer the others did. I didn't know him nearly as well as they did. I didn't have the fond memories. All I could see was the moment the old Scotsman had thrown himself and the cultists who held him hostage off that cliff. For me.

"Hey, cheer up," Sam whispered softly into my ear. The arm she put around my shoulders squeezed gently. "It wasn't your fault. He went out swinging, like he always wanted. He wouldn't want you to be all depressed about it. And neither would Roth."

I scowled at yet another reminder of that particular failure, but I couldn't hold onto it. I couldn't dwell on everyone who'd died or I'd break down. I couldn't afford to do that, not while we were still stuck on this god-forsaken rock. It would only get someone killed, maybe even Sam this time, and I couldn't take that. So I took the guilt, the shame, the regret, and the terror and shoved it into the deepest, darkest corner of my mind. A weak, fragile smile touched my lips and I leaned into Sam.

"Yeah," I muttered quietly into her shoulder. "You're probably right."

She flashed an encouraging smile my way and squeezed my shoulder again.

"Taylor!" A concerned woman's voice cracked out, and I came rushing back to the present.

I flinched back, feeling like I'd just been punched. My chair rocked with me, loudly protesting the sudden motion until Hannah reached over and grabbed its arm. The heavy, bitter scent of her coffee filled my nose. My heart thundered in my ears. My tongue felt heavy and leaden. A slow, tight pain had settled deep into my shoulders and chest. Hannah pulled my chair back fully upright and her hand moved from it to my forearm.

"Welcome back, Taylor," she said gently, lightly squeezing my arm. Her palm was warm against my skin and it carried a firmness that helped me push the images and memories back into the depths of my mind. "Are you alright?"

I bit down the first response that came to mind. "Y-yeah," I said at length, after I'd stopped feeling like I'd bite her head off. She'd more than earned that much. "Yeah. I'm fine."

She gave me an inscrutable look.

"Really," I insisted. I tried for an encouraging smile but it felt closer to a grimace.

"No you're not," Hannah countered simply, no trace of doubt in her voice. "You went back to that island, of course you're not."

"I'm fine," I repeated, stressing the word more than was probably strictly necessary. I knew better than to deny it at this point. She understood the flashbacks and the memories too well for that to have a chance. "It was just a memory. It wasn't even a bad one. Not really."

"What was it?" she asked quietly. There was no pressure or expectations in her tone, just a simple request. She ducked down and met my stare evenly. Her eyes were soft with understanding, and absent the pity or condescension I'd seen in almost everyone who heard about the island. There wasn't a single sign of anything but an honest desire to help.

I sighed heavily and relented.

"It was the last meal we ate on the island." The words came out without inflection or emotion. I'd remember too much if they didn't. "Two of us had been killed a couple hours before and Jonah was having a kind of informal wake or funeral or something. I don't know what to call it. We all sat around the fire I'd managed to start and he was telling us funny stories about them as he cooked."

I paused and closed my eyes. The image of Jonah's mangled corpse flashed behind my eyes. I flinched. "He died the next morning."

A loud scraping noise filled the air. I opened my eyes to find Hannah shifting her chair around the table to sit next to me. She wrapped an arm around my shoulders and pulled me into her side in a one-armed hug.

"Thanks for telling me," Hannah said. The hug relaxed and she slid the small plate holding her so-far-untouched pastry over in front of me. "Now eat up. You look like you could use it."

One of my eyebrows rose of its own volition. It wasn't every day Hannah would pass up her favorite snack. She caught on to my disbelief and smirked at me, urging me on with a wave of her free hand. I gave her another weird look, shrugged, and bit into the pastry. It was surprisingly sweet.

She flashed a smile at my obedience. "Cheer up Taylor. I know you probably don't agree, but things are getting better."

She was right. I didn't agree. But I didn't want to keep talking about it, so I just shrugged.

"Speaking of getting better," I said, gently shrugging her arm off my shoulder. I turned and flashed her my best teasing smile. It didn't feel right on my face, and I'm sure it didn't look right, but I needed a topic change too much to let that stop me. "Have you made any progress?"

"Progress with wh-" she began, only to cut off abruptly as a light dusting of red touched her cheeks. My smile suddenly felt much more natural.

"I knew it!" I leaned in as I spoke, basking in her embarrassment. It was so rare to see Hannah at anything less than cool and composed, let alone flustered like this, and only the topic of the mystery man she'd set her eyes on could bring it out. The day she'd accidentally let him slip was a fun one. "There's no way he could resist. So, when's your first date?"

"It, it's not like that," she insisted. Her blush deepened visibly. "How many times do I have to tell you? He's just a friend."

"Right," I drawled, drawing the word out. My fingers made sarcastic air quotes as I continued. "A 'friend'. Is that what we're calling it now?"

"Yes," she said firmly and gave me the stink eye. My grin widened all on its own. "Because that's what it is."

"The lady doth protest too much, methinks." I silently thanked my mother for my ability to plagiarize the Bard.

"I knew I never should have mentioned him," she sighed, cradling her face in one hand. I could see the reluctant smile she was trying to hide. "You're never going to let it go, are you?"

"Nope," I confirmed. "Not until you stop hiding in denial."

"There is no denial," she denied firmly. Her blush finally started to fade as she regained her mental balance. "He's a friend, nothing more."

"That's not what your face says," I told her matter of factly. She mock-scowled at me then reached out and ruffled my hair, ignoring my squawked protest.

"Brat," she said fondly. There was no sting in the words. She smiled at me, a wicked and mischievous expression. "Since you're so interested in the topic, is there anyone that's caught your eye?"

"Not particularly," I said honestly. I barely knew how to talk to boys before I left for Yamatai, and I hadn't seen any point in trying since I got back. With everything else going on in my life, finding a boyfriend was the least of my priorities. Which was a good thing, right then. It meant Hannah couldn't return fire. "And I doubt it'll happen anytime soon. You'll have to find something else."

She frowned faintly at me, but as soon as she noticed I was looking it turned into a sly smile. "Don't worry, I intend to."

"I'm shaking in my boots," I said dryly.

"Good." Her head jerked in a stern nod, but the effect was diminished by the amused twinkle in her eyes. She took a moment to sip at her coffee, evidently relishing the taste, before continuing on a new old topic. "Anyway, have you given any more thought to what you're going to do after school?"

"I have," I told her. And I had. I'd thought about it a lot. I would have even without her prompting. But no matter how much time I spent dwelling on it, or how much thought I put into it, the answer never changed. "I still don't know."

Hannah nodded. She had expected that answer, the same one I gave her every time she asked the question. Then she responded the same way she always did.

"Do you have any idea why?" There was no judgment in her voice. No pity or condescension in her eyes. It was an honest question, just like it was every time.

"N-," I started on pure reflex before a thought stopped me. Surprise was thick in my voice as I continued. "Actually, I think I do."

Hannah's eyebrow arched up and she leaned forward. Her hand gently settled on my arm again and squeezed encouragingly. She didn't say anything, but her interest was clear.

"I think," I started, struggling to sort out my thoughts and voice them at the same time. "I think it's because I don't know what I want." I shook my head. That was mostly true, but it didn't sound right. "No. Well, yes, but that's not all of it." I fell silent for several long seconds as I wrestled with my thoughts. The concepts were right on the tip of my tongue, but I couldn't find the words for them. "It's like, it's like it doesn't matter. I have no idea where my life is going or what I want, and I just don't care. It all seems so, so petty and minor and, and boring. Nothing feels important anymore. I, I wake up every morning and just coast through the day. I don't care what I'm doing and half the time I don't even know why I'm doing it."

The words poured out of me in a torrent. Frustrations I didn't even know I had welled up from deep within me. "I try to be normal, to go to school and be a good little girl, but I can't even tell what that is. Everywhere I look, I see people I don't understand doing things I don't understand for reasons I don't understand. Nothing makes sense anymore. Every day is a long string of nonsense I have to force myself to pretend to care about, and it's, it's..."

"Oh Taylor," Hannah said sadly. Her hand moved from my arm to over my shoulders and she pulled me into another one-armed hug. I was surprised to find fat tears slowly sliding down my cheeks as she pulled my face into her shoulder. She rubbed my back in slow, soothing circles and whispered nonsensical encouragements into my hair. My meager attempts to hold back collapsed, and thick choking sobs wracked my body. She held me and let me cry.

We sat like that for a long time. Conscious thought fled as I poured out months of frustration and anxiety in enormous, wrenching sobs. I was running on raw emotion and only distantly noticed the passing of time. Eventually though, my tears began to slow. The overwhelming, gut-wrenching force of my emotions dimmed enough for rational thought to start having a say again.

The second I'd recovered enough of my composure to realize what I'd been doing, I flinched out of her arms like I'd been burned. Embarrassment and shame coursed through me, forcing me to turn away. My cheeks were burning red. I could feel my body shrinking in on itself. I shouldn't have done that. I really shouldn't have done that.

"Feeling better?" Hannah asked calmly. I blinked. She put a finger on my chin, turned my head toward her, and gave me a small, empathetic smile. An enormous wet splotch of snot and tears spread from her shoulder down to her breast, but she ignored it in favor of wiping a napkin at the tear tracks all over my face. I caught her hand on the second pass, took the napkin from her, and tried to clean myself up.

"I, Yes. Maybe? I don't know," I muttered through the paper. I was mentally exhausted and so far beyond mortified that I didn't have words for it. I couldn't have lied to her then even if I'd wanted to.

"Good." Hannah's smile faltered when I still couldn't meet her eyes. She ducked down and forced me to meet her gaze. She held my gaze with firm, steady confidence. "That was healthy. Normal even. You've got nothing to be ashamed of."

I couldn't force words out through the weight of my embarrassment, so I settled for looking away. Hannah shook her head with a sigh and squeezed my shoulder. "Trust me on this Taylor. You should be feeling like that right now. The only cure is time. You'll figure out what you want when you're ready."