Walter laid on his couch messily; his posture crooked and one leg hanging off the side, the other hanging off the arm rest. He pressed his palms into his eyes, covering over the defined features and letting his elbows poke up towards the roof as he took big breaths in and out.

“Well, you know,” Aaliyah’s smooth, thoughtful tone broke the silence of recovery in his loungeroom, “at least we got those milkshakes. I didn’t even know you could order them.”

“You can’t.” Walter replied, trying his best to be amiable, even if he really didn’t want to be in the same room as her right now, “I tried.”

“Apparently you can.” Ajax said softly from his relaxed pose in a nearby chair. The man was tall enough that just aligning his shoulders with the back of the chair had his waist hanging off the seat, which the Greek man remedied by placing his legs on the coffee table.

“It was Chef.” Mirah said, her tone neutral as always. Almost as neutral, in fact, as her slouching form within the large, plush chair she’d sat in. Walter lifted one of the palms from his eyes, to look at the scarred girl blearily.

“Chef? Are they why you don’t ever get what you order?” Walter asked half-heartedly. Mirah nodded succinctly, though Aaliyah scoffed.

“Come on Walt, you’re playing behind on the gossip. This was week one stuff.” He sighed, desperately wanting to ignore the girl, to give himself at least a little time to process just how rapidly things had shifted right in front of his eyes.

“Right, right,” he nodded after a moment, his elbows bobbing up and down with the movement of his head, “the notes Mirah was getting?”

“Bingo!” Aaliyah responded from her place on a large sitting cushion, one that Walter had brought from home because it was his favourite and had proceeded to not use once since he arrived. He’d even promised that he would call home once a week or so, and that’d fallen through by week three. Something that Walter was finding himself regretting sorely.

“But why milkshakes?” Ajax said, a little confused, willing to take the detour in conversation before they inevitably arrived at the hard-hitting topics, “Don’t get me wrong, they were great, and I haven’t had a milkshake in years. Missed ‘em more than I thought.”

“Well,” Aaliyah said slowly, “probably just because they’re good when you’re having a rough time. Like the comfort of a tub of ice-cream after a breakup.” That was a total lie, of course. Aaliyah had actually never been in a committed relationship, or at least not one that lasted long enough for it to even be classed as one, as horrifically painful as that specific mess had been. Ice-cream did serve well for the depression following your sister’s death though. After you spent at least a little while being unable to stomach much more than water.

“Cheers to that.” Walter groaned heavily and pulled the palms from his eyes. He linked his fingers together as he rested the back of his hands on his forehead, screwing up his eyes against the artificial light in the ceiling, “God knows I could go for another one right about now.”

There was a grumbling response from the rest of the team, even Mirah nodded, an action that Walter caught out of the corner of his eye. Walter couldn’t pretend that he felt comfortable around the stoic woman, and he’d probably devolve into a mess if he had to spend time with only her without a clear topic of conversation. However, despite that, he was coming to appreciate her quietness, even if it was somewhat manufactured by the lack of her understanding. She was an easy person to listen to when most of what she said carried significant weight.

“I guess we should just get into it then?” Ajax announced with a sigh, pulling himself up from his comfortably terrible posture and relaxing into a more commanding pose. Walter didn’t bother to move, just preparing himself for what was a shitty conversation altogether.

“What are we going with first?” Aaliyah said, exacting at least a little control over the conversation that was likely to put her in the most volatile situation she’d been in for a good while.

“My parents.” Walter said, chiming in harshly, his voice already a little raw from just saying the words. A mixture of fear and anger, with a healthy dash of hopelessness. The gnawing dread in his stomach made him feel like throwing up, acidic and bubbling with a vicious glee.

Aaliyah pulled her legs into herself, her long and slender legs guarding her body as she rested her chin on her own knee, “I got the info from Guy, though I don’t know if he was being fed questions and answers by Slip. He didn’t explicitly say that your parents were working for Baxter or RO, but a look of surprise and an offhand comment about you ‘already being punished’ was enough to tip me off.”

Walter clenched his jaw hard enough that it was already making the headache he’d developed earlier come back with a furious burning in his temples. “He tipped you off, how is that at all reliable?” He hissed as he tried to not direct his overwhelming anger at the blonde woman, even if he could think of any number of reasons that she’d deserve it.

“I’m not going to say that it’s one hundred percent accurate, Walt.” Aaliyah said evenly, “But I’m willing to put a great deal of money on it. Though I have to say, it was the weirdest information deal that I’ve ever experienced.”

“How so?” Ajax broke in, taking some of the heat off of Aaliyah for a bit, letting Walter mentally and emotionally digest the information he was being served. Aaliyah waved a hand around with a look of consternation, like she was trying to grab an answer out of the air itself.

“I don’t know. I feel like he was dropping hints everywhere, even if he wasn’t actually telling me all that much straight up. I don’t know what his game was.” Ajax gave Aaliyah a long, searching look. Ajax was surprisingly perceptive, enough to at least notice that she wasn’t being entirely forthcoming about herself when they’d first met. Though, he hadn’t intellectually put any of the pieces together until Mirah started acting weird around her, which had tipped him off.

“You’re saying that he might be playing double agent?” Ajax asked, thick eyebrow raised at the girl sitting on the floor, though it only made her bark out a laugh.

“Dated tropes, Ajax. Where have you been, the eighties?” Though she shrugged and sighed after a moment, “No, I don’t think he’s doubling for anyone. I just think he likes Jeremy and the rest of his team about as much as we like them. I think Slip had a goal in sending him instead of meeting me himself, and it backfired.”

“That’s a little convoluted, Aaliyah.” Ajax said clearly, cutting through her use of speculatory sentences. “What’s the likelihood of any of that being the reality?”

“I–” Aaliyah began, her voice frustrated and almost offended, before winding down as she pushed the red spots that had appeared on her skin, “Look. I do my research, alright?”

“And I’m not saying that you don’t. I’m asking if–”

“I know what you’re asking!” She hissed roughly, fighting against the flash of red on her skin. Aaliyah struggled to push it down with a collection of deep breaths as she realised that all of her teammates were suddenly on edge, muscles tensed, almost like she was going to attack them.

“Alright! Fine.” She said, steeling herself against her own vulnerability, “I’ve been digging up info about their team for ages, since after our fight with them. I’ve found fuck all on Slip, cause he’s probably a street rat with less documentation than you’d get out of where your dubiously manufactured smartphone was made.” She took in a deep breath, chewing at the side of her mouth, stopping herself as she faintly tasted the pungent metallic flavour of blood.

“Terrence Nguyen, the telekinetic that Walter fought, is the son of a High Order psychopath, Binh Nguyen. She owns most of the ‘independent’ supermarkets and one of the bigger chains, probably around fifteen or twenty percent market share. All in all.”

“Impressive.” Walter said with dry sarcasm.

“It would be,” Aaliyah agreed, ignoring Walter’s cutting sarcasm, “if she hadn’t married a man, had children with him, tortured them secretly in their early years, and then after she tortured Terrence into Awakening, she forced him to kill his father and his siblings.”

The room’s air seemed to run cold around their skin, forcing a tingling sensation of fear to run down their spines, even for Aaliyah. Somehow, saying it out loud to others was so much scarier than it was when she had read it and kept it to herself.

“That’s fucked.” Walter said dully. He didn’t have the emotional capacity to display the dread laying in his stomach, only compounded by the fact that he was coming to realise that he had fought a mass-murderer. The terrifying thought of just what that final kinetic blow the other man had landed was supposed to do to him just…

He couldn’t think about it. Not right now.

“Jeremy probably isn’t any better. I have no doubts that he’s killed before, and either his dearest daddy has swept it under the proverbial rug, or he’s just killed everyone that could’ve talked. Slip is basically the same, though he’s more likely to be an accessory to a murder than an actual perpetrator. He, no doubt, had a hand in them, though.” She slowed her words, leaning back against the wall behind her, pulling into herself further.

“Jesus Christ,” Ajax intoned, though the man lacked any real connection to religion, “why the fuck are so many people murderers?” Aaliyah hid her grimace, knowing that the man definitely included her in that statement. She wanted to argue the point, to tell him that some people have their reasons, or that there might even be a good reason behind some of them, but she kept her mouth clamped shut. If she spoke now, she’d be lumping herself in with Jeremy Baxter, and that certainly wouldn’t earn her any favours.

Not with her little reveal earlier in the day, anyway.

“What about Guy?” The soft and remarkably pleasant voice belonging to Mirah rung out in the conversation. Aaliyah felt the twisted emotions in the air unravel, as if she’d cut the knotted ropes with her voice and released more tension that the words had any right to be.

“And that, Mirah, is where shit got weird.” Aaliyah said, letting a little playfulness leak into her voice, “Or, depending on how observant you were at the time, very boring.” The team’s interest was piqued, with even Walter shifting slightly to be able to glance at her with his sour expression.

“Get on with it.” He said sharply, not appreciating the playful tone. Aaliyah didn’t bother to bristle at the remark.

“I got the name of his primary school, high school, and a few hobby clubs that he was involved in for a while. Even got the name of his mum and a few other bits and pieces along the way, but even when I snooped further and got a hold of his school reports–”

“Jesus, Aaliyah.” Ajax groaned, though she glowered at him.

“I don’t see you having any solid information to work off of, Ajax. Want to share something with the class?” Aaliyah snapped, feeling the line had been croseed. Ajax just closed his eyes and sighed heavily, crossing his arms as he waited for her to continue.

“As I was saying,” she continued accusingly, “I got a hold of his school repots, and I was honestly expecting something about violence or general assholery, but I found that he was basically just a normal kid with social anxiety and a light mention of bullying.” She stopped and thought for a moment.

“Bets on the ‘light bullying’ being why he ended up Awakening?” She looked between the unresponsive faces, then shrugged, “Anyway. Last night I spent some time going over his stuff again after I met him, and found some interesting info on his mother’s past. Or lack of it, I should say.

“So, riddle me this. How does a street-born nobody end up with enough money to run away to the wealthy districts from her life on the streets with her child?” None of the team members answered her, and she didn’t bother going through the list of possibilities either. She had no real answer, but there was some wacky shit happening in Guy’s past, or in his Mother’s past, and that was enough to draw suspicion for her.

“And what do we do about that?” Ajax said, prompting her forward with a dull question.

“For now, nothing. We keep it in mind as we go, and when the time comes, we are the ones with the information.” Aaliyah answered just as dully, leaving the room in a state of constipated frustration. All of them, Aaliyah included, want actionable information yesterday; that way they can actually get a handle on the situation they’re in. Until then it’s a bit of a wash, but they have a start now, and that start was going to be invaluable no matter how they sliced it.

Walter took this moment to sit up from the plush recesses of his couch, turning to face the tall blonde head on, his eyes just about burning with a smouldering anger.

“And what do we do about you, Monarch?” He said quietly, the venom just about dripping from his words. Aaliyah tried to reconcile the awkward, flustered boy she’d met on her first day in the building with the man she was currently looking at, his eyes just about screaming their anger at her.

“I–” But there was a sharp knock at the door, cutting her sentence off and leaving the room in a state of confused, but tense, silence. From the corner of the room, sitting in the plush chair with her issued smartphone, Mirah stood and quickly walked to the door, opening it, and retrieving something from the floor.

The odd display of not only Mirah using a smartphone—which none of them had ever seen her do in the past—but extricating herself from the conversation so neatly, made the rest of the team just stare dumbly as she returned with a tray of four large, metallic cups. Their outer surface was slightly fogged, with perspiration littering it as the cold liquid it contained thoroughly cooled the cup itself.

She placed the tray on the table, taking one of the thick. metal straws also on the tray, and retreating to her chair, inserting the straw into the cup filled with the creamy, chocolatey mixture.

Ajax was the first to break the silence, snorting loudly enough that he made himself burst out in laughter, slapping heavily against his knee all the while as Aaliyah struggled to keep her face to a smirk rather than the wide grin it wanted to split into.

“What the hell Mirah.” Walter said defeatedly, though the scarred girl responded with a raised eyebrow as she drank from the straw.

“Milkshakes?” She said questioningly, only furthering Ajax’s laugh into what could only be described as a howl, with Aaliyah finally breaking and joining in with a laugh of her own. Walter just covered his face, trying to collect himself against the bizarre moment.

Though he had to hid the tremors of his own laugh as it managed to infect his own expression.

“God damn milkshakes.” He groaned.