This wasn't meant to be a damn field trip, but all the same, I found myself learning a lot about people and the places I went, just on the merits of being in their heads.

I learned the two most reliable indicators of how friendly people were in a place were the number of diners and how they drove. Too many diners meant they got a lot of traffic going through the place, off the highway or some tourist trap, and nobody gave a shit about anyone who set foot in any of 'em. Too few, and the place was either so rural that every single outsider was a subject of intense suspicion and scrutiny, or so urban that nobody even considered the other bodies passing by them to be another human.

Small towns with two or three diners seemed to be the sweet spot. People would still be interested in you showing up, but accustomed to it enough to not be rude about it. I aimed for these places, not because I really cared if people noticed or liked me, but because the people in such areas just had a lot more pleasant thoughts bumping around in their heads, and if I had to hear it all from them anyway, I might as well be listening to something nicer.

As for how they drove, that one may be biased by the fact I was exclusively foot traffic. I hadn't noticed any larger trends beyond 'people who drive like assholes tend to be assholes' but it was still interesting that each little city I wandered through had its own way of doing things. In some places, pedestrians clung frightened to the sidewalks as cars roared past without a second thought, while in others, they strutted boldly into the street without so much as a glance, certain that their right-of-way gave them invulnerability.

And after my long journey of walking across a few states by foot, I finally reached D.C. where my quest would begin. And here, a city without diners, a city where both cars and pedestrians ran into the street without a care, choking on their own self-importance, here is where I hoped to pick up Mage's trail and make some sense of the girl's life.

And more importantly, I hoped, her death.

It had been an exhausting week and a half, and not just from all the walking. People. So many people. I was frankly sick of them when I had started, and after my trip, I was about ready to throw in the towel on behalf of the species again. Damn fucking monsters, driving past me walking on the shoulder of the highway, and no sooner would they figure out I was a girl than they imagined me naked and thanking them for a ride with the only possessions I had.

Those were the worst of them, and definitely those I would have no problem with liquefying their brains, but even just the idiots driving by screaming some song at me at the top of their minds was enough to drive me crazy.

And basically, this city was the worst I'd ever been in. Seemed like nobody here was mentally sound, from the young smartasses who thought they were the up-and-coming hot shit to the old fucks who had been in the game so long their own bodies were held together by political interest groups, they made me feel physically sick just being in their proximity, and several times I had to stop and lean against a wall, remembering the black ringed in light which threatened everyone--everyone I wanted to live, not these fuckers, and force myself to keep moving forward.

Last time, it had felt so easy. I'd come here to kill everyone, and all these type-A personalities running around had just reinforced that decision. Couldn't walk ten feet without running into someone new and going, yep, this species should definitely be dead.

I was trudging down a side street, trying to figure out how to get close to the members of the P-Force without running into Athan, loitering near the black tower without loitering, basically, when I felt a surge of panic and alertness in a mind which wasn't mine. Some XPCA walking down the street had spotted me and recognized me from my last little visitation.

With a thought, his thoughts stopped, and so did his hand reaching for his comms. He blinked several times in mild confusion before continuing on his way, his brain hanging on the edge like he was about to sneeze but it wasn't coming. He'd come up with some excuse later, brains were pretty fantastic at inventing rationale to explain things they couldn't understand. There was even a word for that, confabulation.

It was a new trick I'd learned on this trip, exploiting that hugely convenient little quirk of human nature. Meant I could snoop around, blasting out people's thoughts and memories of me without raising suspicion of people turning into zombies or having sudden bouts of amnesia.

I guess if I were Athan, I might also care about the morality of it all, but heh, yeah. No.

As much as D.C. sucked, at least the people here had a legit reason to freak out when they saw me. The small towns I'd passed through, I'd been harassed for any reason from 'lookin' like some Chinee', which I guess was technically correct...to just being a woman walking alone...to being an XPCA of all things, I guess reading the style and emblems on my uniform. That one actually amused me, and I had to respect anyone with the guts to walk up to an XPCA and tell them they sucked to their face.

Mostly I just blasted them out, but a couple, I decided to act on humanity's best interests and compel them to kill themselves. Even though I was trying to keep a low profile, sometimes I was just such a softie when it came to helping out mankind, I couldn't help it.

Focusing on the here and now, what I wanted more than anything was to find Jack. My powers completely eclipsed his--he couldn't even physically see me unless he was already in my range, and once we were talking, he'd have to jump twice to get away, giving me a chance to make him stop. He had a knife, I had immortality. Easy, peasey.

Tower was a simpleton, and therefore I couldn't trust his memories. Anything he didn't understand, he might have invented rationale for, and separating the two would be effort I wasn't interested in putting forward. Also, his powers acted on their own in ways, a 'dynakinetic' or 'dynagenesist' or hell 'dynamist' rather than a 'dynapath'...the XPCA had innumerable classification rules which made no sense, but that was probably mostly because I didn't give a shit...but the important part was, if he used his powers to make a run for it, he'd have to make an active effort to turn them off, unlike Jack, who needed an effort to turn them on. Much easier to stop the latter than the former.

Tem was...too stupid and volatile to be worth it. Athan was...incredibly tempting, but that was exactly why he was out of the question. And I had plans for Blackett after this.

So I crept around, keeping a mind open for anyone who'd seen or heard from Jack recently, while trying my best not to get spotted, especially by drones or cameras, since I couldn't very well wipe their memories.

Still it was kind of an anticlimax when, strolling in circles around the Raven's Nest, I suddenly picked up on him, standing in a small shop not far from me on the ground floor. He wasn't Athan, so he had no idea what the little prickling on his brain meant, and I found myself grinning as I closed in on him to make sure he didn't abruptly jump out of range.

He was relaxed, casually conversing with some girl in a wheelchair, actually hard to get too much surface-level information out of him, because people usually were thinking about what they were looking at, and he didn't 'look' in the conventional sense. Like, I had no idea what this girl's face looked like or anything, just sort of a blocky model of her, and her position relative to him. I wondered if he ever got annoyed seeing the world through his powers, like I did.

Well, I was on the scene now and could use my own eyes. He was in a flower shop, one which looked very closed. Which was good, I guess, since he'd come there to talk to the girl, not to buy flowers. How sweet. I slowly started to dig right in, hoping to get as much as I could without alerting him.

Abruptly, he was standing behind me, knife held to my throat. I guess he did know what the prickle on his brain meant. That was pretty careless of me to assume.

"Oh no! He's going to kill me!" I said, sarcasm gushing through a smile.

"You are that Code-X from the tower. Did you honestly think I wouldn't notice you approach?"

"Well, I was keeping track of your thoughts at the time, but I guess you're actually pretty good at keeping your thoughts under wraps, huh? Got some experience with Code-X in the past?"

"One could say that."

"Too bad I can just make you forget all about me right now if I wanted to. Boy, that'd suck, after catching me and everything."

"I suspect that would be resolved by repeatedly keeping you dead until you can be properly secured. Which could take days or weeks, and yet somehow I still find myself willing. You threw innocent men to their deaths."

"Eh. I mean, they barely counted as alive."

I grinned more broadly, and his smile shrunk. I was winning the smile race!

"I understand you are an acquaintance of Chariot's, which is why I haven't acted on this plan. Just tell me what you want and then leave forever and I will make no mention of you, for his sake."

"Well, you're just a big 'ol sweetheart, aren't you? Speaking of which, you're sure you're okay with just leaving the little cripple all alone like that? She's wondering why you vanished."

"She will understand. Now talk or go."

"Always in such a rush. Sheesh. Hard to find a good man who will just take it slow, nowadays they're all about teleporting here and there."

"Talk or go."

"Or what? Seriously. You show up and make all these threats, but between the two of us, I'm the one who can't die, and I'm the one who can mess up your girlfriend's cute little blue head with just a thought, to say nothing of yours. Say, wouldn't it be funny if she thought your name was Jock from now on?"

Abruptly I felt searing pain like I'd been touched by fire. I'd had my throat slit plenty of times before and recognized the choking burble as the contents of my jugular and windpipe intermingled, and knew I only had a couple moments before the drop in blood pressure in my brain made me too stupid and unconscious to act.

I reached out mentally at the man behind me, but he was gone. Predictably, the next place I tried, right next to his girl, he was there. A little trickle of blood and a smile crossed my lips as I pressed down on his mind but then he was gone again, woman in tow, much faster than I think even he thought he was capable of moving.

My last thoughts before I fell into blackness were well, shit.

I woke up a few seconds later, and the first thing I saw was a spray of bright red blood through the air from my recently-healed, and then recently-repunctured neck. The little fucker had left his knife in me as a farewell gift. I tried to reach towards it, with a frantic gurgle, but my hands were already like ice and my body wouldn't react to my brain properly.

This guy was a serious pain in the neck.

In this way I died and came back another three times before I managed to dislodge the knife by creeping my hands upwards in the single moment of responsive lucidity I had before my body realized it was dying. Took most of a minute, and the alley I was in now looked like a person with an unhealthy abundance of blood just detonated, but finally I dropped the knife to the ground with a clatter and waited to come back whole one more time. Before I did, as I was glossing over, he reappeared and picked up his knife.

The next few minutes of my life were pretty unpleasant, and I wasn't alive for most of them. Come back, scramble around to find Jack somewhere near by and stop him, fail entirely until I was too weak to use my powers, and then he'd reappear and jump us off somewhere else towards his destination.

It occurred to me that in future dealings with the man, I should drop him unconscious the very instant I picked up on him. Or better, go for Tower or Tem. This asshole wasn't worth all this.

Eventually, we were somewhere more remote, more quiet, with fewer people around, and that was his mistake. I hadn't been able to pick up on him in the one moment of lucidity I had per life because there was too much going on around, and he was constantly moving to keep me confused. But now that it was quieter, I could find him and after a couple tries, nailed him hard with an order to sleep.

Still took like, five more deaths to get the knife out of my neck again, but he slept peacefully on a rooftop a dozen feet away the whole time while I gurgled and bled him out a nice little lullaby. After producing another fantastic bloody murder scene, I was up and whole again, and he was still asleep and completely at my mercy.

It'd be easy now to just rifle through his thoughts, but I kind of admired the guy for giving me so much trouble. Plus, while he was sleeping, he wasn't smiling, and I missed that.

I mean, not really, it'd just be more fun this way.

Also, I'd die again jumping off this building, and I'd rather avoid that if I could. I gave him just a teensy compel to come here and hold up just a second with the knife work and woke him up. Instantly, he was standing right there, knife at the ready, looking just a bit confused why he'd decided to come here but not quite picking up what I'd done.

Apparently he took his momentary lapse as having decided we were going to talk, because that's what he started doing.

"You put me to sleep." It wasn't a question.

"I sure did."

"Why didn't you kill me?"

"Please. Don't tell me you actually believe all that propaganda the XPCA spits out? I'm sure you've met one or two Exhumans who aren't just ruthless killing machines."

I gave him a shit eating grin, but then ruined it by choking. I hadn't talked this much in a long time, and it was killing me. Too many people around to broadcast, though. I could just put them all under for a bit, but for the ones driving, that might be a little bit of a bother. More of a bother for the people in front of their cars, really, but still. I'd just have to tough it out for now.

"Miss, you assaulted our headquarters and killed half of the top staff. I think in this case, I do buy the propaganda."

"Well, see, that's how they get you," I said. "If all it takes is throwing some people off a building to brand you a killer, then I guess I'm a killer."

"Right. So. Why didn't you kill me?"

"Well, when you were carrying me around, I noticed we were headed away from the huge, black, phallic monument, so I figured you weren't trying to dispose of me either. Only seemed right to return the courtesy? Also I would piss off Athan if I killed you. He's such a child about things like that sometimes."

He sighed and I noticed I was getting under his skin. Fun, but not why I was here.

"What do you want, Saga?" he asked.

I considered...like, really gave some serious thought to screwing with him a bit more, but in the end decided my mission was just that important. "I want to know everything there is to know about Mage."

"Why?"

"Because she shouldn't have died."

"Well, she did. I read the autopsy."

"So I can see," I said brushing across his mind which made him shudder. "Numerous internal ruptures, drowned in her own punctured lungs' blood, basically."

"If you want something, you can just ask," he said, his smiling looking more annoyed than happy.

"Well if I did, I wouldn't get your little bits of cheerful commentary coming with it, and let's face it, that's all I'm really after. Puts a smile on my face."

He sighed. "Chariot said you were difficult, but I thought he just meant in the powers department."

"Aw, he talks about me?"

"No, not particularly."

"Rude." I poked his mind more aggressively, punitively. "So you knew her longest, being the first to show up at Blackett's little party after her. Oh no, Tem was there before you. How rude of me to overlook her, and so difficult to do. She was there for most of two years before either of you showed up? Hmm, just a little girl and an overworked, lonely sadist in a house for two years. And you never even thought to ask what was up?"

"Blackett wasn't that kind of man," Jack intoned, his voice very nearly as sharp as the knife in-hand.

"And what kind of girl was Mage when you moved in?"

"Honestly, I can't say with much certainty. She largely avoided me whenever possible, and I was still...adjusting."

"Right. Because you were a professional assassin for a while there I see."

His smile utterly vanished but only for a brief moment.

"I would appreciate your discretion in whatever you pry from my mind, or I really will have to make sure you wind up permanently dead," he said, smiling pleasantly again.

"Fair enough, as long as you don't tell anyone I was here. I mean, I could just wipe your memories, but that just gets tiresome."

Not like I actually cared if he told anyone. Athan might be a problem, but I'm sure the man had better things to do than deliberately provoke me.

"It looks like even if you were 'adjusting' you were still paying attention. You have quite a few memories in here of some pretty implausible things she could pull off. Seems to me that she wasn't the one doing all the avoiding."

"Reasonable to conclude. Anyone who knew that girl long enough could tell you she had the most frightening power of any of us, but I'm not sure anyone could quantify what the power exactly was."

"Probably one of the reasons it was so scary. Easy to fear what you can't understand."

"I suspect so. As a Code-Xavier, you may have some insight how she operated?"

"I do. And all I'm going to say is, be grateful you didn't have her powers."

"I see. They took that much out of her?"

"Probably the only person happy with her death was her."

He scratched his chin, looking just a bit ridiculous with the blood-dripping knife in his other hand and the broad smile on his face. "If she sought death, then why are you questioning it? Would it not be more suspect if she craved death yet continued living?"

"I said I wasn't going to say anything else about it." I grinned at him. "This is my interrogation, not yours."

He sighed, but let it go.

"Seems she was every bit as callow and antagonistic the first time you saw her as the last. Funny, Athan usually seems to have quite the effect on girls around him, but I guess she was immune to his charms."

"Hmm, yes, I noticed that as well. Even Moon seems to have taken a liking to him, in her own way."

"Moon?"

"The newest--"

"--member on the P-Force, special physiokinetic with possession powers, I see...and a hint of Code-X, interesting."

"I must ask, do you merely consider my lips a vestigial ornament? Or is there a reason you prefer to uncomfortably rifle through my mind instead of allowing me to finish a simple sentence?"

"Like I said, Sunshine, leaves your mouth available for your sparkling commentary. Hey, do you do impressions? Next time you complain, can you pretend to be Gandhi? Dude is fucking hilarious."

"Even if I generously discount all of the obvious and concrete data, there is still enough of a mountain of supporting evidence to conclude something being very seriously wrong with you. I am beginning to wonder if I was remiss in not taking you to the XPCA."

"Well that was just the worst Gandhi I've ever heard. It's like you weren't even trying."

He sighed again, and that smile struggled every so valiantly to stay on his face.

"Are we quite finished?" He asked.

"No way. We're going all night. You've got the stamina for that, right?"

"I will give you," he opened his eyes and peered at his holo "how does five seconds sound?"

"I don't think you'll ever satisfy Blue with that mindset, Sunshine."

"...and we're concluded. Thank you for visiting, please never return." He turned to go. He didn't actually have to in order to jump off. What a nice guy, giving me one more chance.

"All right, all right. One more question, for realsies. Where did Mage come from?"

"Hmm. I can't think of a time she would have told me, and I only recall vagueness being offered by Blackett."

Thoughts flashed through his mind as he tried to recall. I dove in and 'helped', trying to find the exact first conversation they had.

Jack was beaten and bruised, one leg broken, eye swollen shut, and a bomb strapped to the back of his head to keep him from porting off. Hmm, and not just on his head. Part of it was in his head, so if he ported off and left it behind, he'd bleed to death internally. Brutal. But clever. He was being carried under the arms to an interrogation room where he was thrown into a chair, almost immediately sliding out of it, and on the other side of the room was Blackett with Mage behind him; him stoic, her grinning sadistically at the beaten man before her.

Jack smiled back.

"Hello, Jack. Do you know who I am?" Blackett said.

Jack, for his part, despite being only barely able to sit in a chair, spat in Blackett's direction. I was disappointed to see he missed.

"I'm Deputy Director Blackett of the XPCA. A very important man, and a very irritated one. Do you know why I am irritated, Jack?"

"Gwun 'ckself", Jack muttered and coughed.

"What was that?"

"I said," Jack suddenly yelled "go and fuck yourself."

To my surprise, Mage appeared before Jack, apparently by magic, but most likely because Jack wasn't in really good shape, and neither was this memory.

"Language," she chided, and slapped him hard across the face.

It didn't take the smile off his face.

"This is Camila, an associate of mine who is visiting from down south. I think the two of you will get along splendidly."

I pulled myself out of the memory, satisfied.

"Camila, from down south," I said.

"If you were listening to my ornamental vestigial mouth, I had said as much," Jack said, now just clearly annoyed. "But that isn't very useful. There is a lot south of us."

"Not on its own, it's not. But if Blackett knows she's from down south, I bet he knows where she came from."

Jack just laughed. "Good luck with that, then," and disappeared. I caught him a couple dozen feet away and let him go. I'd gotten what I needed from him.

Confirmation that Blackett had the information I needed was good. For whatever reason, probably the most expensive XPCA tech in the universe, my powers just couldn't even see the guy, much less touch him, so I'd have to resort to traditional interrogative means.

Which was fine. I could work with that. As long as I knew what I was getting myself into.

I smiled at the prospect of adding yet another XPCA director's death to my resume and took a look around. And the smile vanished. Oh right. I was completely soaked in blood on a blood-soaked rooftop with apparently no roof access into the building, and a six-story vertical drop on all sides of me to the ground.

There was something I needed from Jack after all. No wonder he left in such a hurry, the asshole.

I sighed and stepped onto the building's short ledge. May as well do a fucking flip.