The teenagers were weird.

The corner was a comfortable place for Zaira, solitude within solitude. She didn't have to be involved in the conversation or try to figure out what the teenagers meant. Zaira was an outside observer.

Zaira didn't think they knew she had autism. They probably assumed that she was introverted. But they didn't know. They had a weird way of showing things.

Zaira thought back to her solo travels. She could do a million things. Walking around so that the thoughts came faster to her head. Talking to the little cat that came in. Creating a huge workspace. But Rogue had disrupted that. Not in a bad way. But in a way.

Technically, this wasn't her first time hearing of them. Back when she'd been working with Keone, she knew all of them, minus Jay. They were all on the same SCOPE team, and occasionally Keone would talk about them. It was never positive, so she'd waited for them to slip up. That was until she realized Keone lied about everything.

They're all so much younger than her. The last time she interacted with a teenager, he terrorized her and sent her on the run and was now a madman. She should've never taken from him that first time. She should've known something was up with his sudden interest in her, but she couldn't tell then.

Theo was the closest in age, yet he was 3 years younger than her. Zaira thought she preferred them. In a way, she could relate to them. With people her age, it was just a competition of who could be the most pretentious and who could pretend to have their life together. They were all uniquely authentic and allowed themselves to be broken.

Eniola seemed like she pretended to know it all and tried to be certain, even if she knew she couldn't. Lucia and Iris were both aloof in some ways. Lucia was carefree yet cunning, and Iris seemed to be naïve. Theo tried to be confident, but Zaira could tell he was losing his touch. And Jay. He was a unique one.

But Zaira didn't know if they knew her like that.

Hira and Khalil, despite coming out of the womb with her, never seemed to get Zaira. They'd try their best to understand her and include her, but it felt like they were twins who spoke the same language, and Zaira had nothing to talk about with them. Hira was loud, outgoing, and girly. Khali was the opposite, soft-spoken, quiet, and if Zaira admitted, pretentious. She was their stranger, genius sister who lived inside of her head and spoke her language and was "unique", until when she was 20 and they realized it had just been autism.

Fatima was one of the few people her age she liked. Really liked. They knew each other on a deeper level, and Zaira didn't have to force herself to get Fatima. She just did. Zaira wondered if Fatima had ever gotten over her "dying" before they were supposed to have their first date.

Zaira wondered the same thing to herself.

"What should we do today?" Theo asked, draped across the hammock.

Zaira almost forgot. It was time to engage in their conversation as an outsider. Everyone had laid around the room and did nothing, as Zaira tried to get a lead on Paradox on the half of Enigma.

"I don't know," Eniola replied. "If we go outside, someone will see us and soon they'll lock us up."

"This is just like the van," Iris grumbled. "The only difference is that we're not moving."

"At least we can still stand up all the way," Jay said.

"Your head touches the ceiling, Jay," Eniola mentioned. "You can barely stand up."

"I just tried to lighten the mood," he grumbled before taking a seat next to Eniola. "I just feel exhausted at this point. We don't know where Paradox is and we're surviving on noodles, and we're staying in some shit hotel."

"He's right," Lucia agreed. "What do we have?"

"The power of friendship?" Iris suggested.

Everyone sighed. Did they not like each other or something? Zaira assumed they were friends, but lots of her social assumptions had been wrong.

Eniola nodded. "She's right."

Zaira refocused back on Enigma. The computer worked in a way that Zaira understood best. It was like someone had turned her brain into a computer. That's why no one was supposed to steal it. But it happened.

And they could do it again.

Not Paradox. But someone else. Some people. Back in her underground lab days at Stanford, Zaira received these weird, cryptic messages that told her to hand off the computers. She ignored them, of course, but not without getting back subtly. No use trying to make herself suspicious.

And by the time they got worse, she already died. Problem solved.

But PSEUDO. Why was that familiar to her? It almost connected inside of her head to where she'd remembered.

Zaira sighed. She guessed she'd never know.

Zaira typed onto the small screens before she sighed at the red dots scrambled over the map. The signals were still inconclusive.

Sometimes, it acted like a useless piece of junk. Sometimes Zaira didn't even understand her mind. Despite what everyone thought, Zaira wasn't a genius. The two things she'd focused on her entire life had been physics and hacking, so much that it became a part of her. Anything else, and they'd quickly see the smart facade, was just a passionate interest in two things.

Then the red dots stopped and faded away until there was only one.

Bingo.

"Hold on," Zaira said from the corner. "I've got something. Quickly, gather around."

Everyone gathered around Zaira, in front of the synthetic computer linked to the screens. "I've got a reading on the leftover signals from the atoms, and the geo-locator is picking them up."

Zaira felt jittery with excitement as she toggled with the computers. She fought the urge to tap her foot on the ground, even though the impression was almost painful. She didn't want the teenagers to look at her even weirder. Suddenly, the grid zoomed in, and the red tick appeared more specific.

"What happened?" Eniola asked.

"I got a location," Zaira said.

"Well, tell us," Jay said with anticipation.

"Ladies and gentlemen," Zaira announced. "I just found Paradox, and he's right here in Beijing."