Cyrus walked into the main atrium of his building off the foggy street. The high vaulted ceiling was accented by the simple white curves of the architecture to give it a feeling of vast open space. In truth, the atrium was only three stories tall, nothing he'd ever feel impressed about for a corporate building. The receptionist behind the main desk was smiling at him from the other end of the atrium, with twin staircases curving up behind the wide pillar she sat in front of. A few men in somewhat formal wear wandered around, coming in to the building with him, and a couple of them exiting. white lights hung down from the roof on what looked to be white coords, hanging about halfway down. He thought for a moment that maybe he should paint the roof black, so they can look like stars in the sky, but he rejected it based on how uniform they were set out.

He made his way over to the receptionist, with his shoes clacking against the ceramic floor. He glanced down, spotting a rough reflection of himself on the floors finish. His face stared up at him, the young features barely recognizable to himself.

"Time passes even if you don't want it to," he said to himself as he leaned onto the receptionists desk.

"Sir? I didn't quite catch that."

"I was just talking to myself. Have any of our corporate sponsors tried to contact me over the last few days?"

"Mr. Smith of Enterprise Financial Group stopped by the other day. He didn't wait when I told him you were in a meeting. He said he would stop by later but refused to schedule a meeting with me."

"That certainly is his style. He's a brat. Sharp show up?"

"Sharp? Oh! No."

"I'll be in my office, send the COO in when he gets here."

"Yes sir."

Cyrus waltzed through the halls of modern architecture, staring at each piece as he passed by. "Why did I waste money on this? This is supposed to be a research facility to develop lifesaving medicine. It looks like an investment firm."

"What's got your balls twisted?" asked Ira from behind him.

"Do you really have to use that type of speech? We are in the main building, act professional."

"I use the fire escape as a door so I don't have to put on that weird suit you gave me. Why would I act professional?"

"We can't talk out here, lets..." He opened the first door he saw. "Here's an empty meeting room, inside."

The inside of the room was nearly pure white, with gray carpet flooring and a oval black table. Office chairs sat silently around it, with a screen hanging up against the wall, waiting to be turned on. Ira shut the door behind them as Cyrus made his way over to a window.

"Why are you here today? I ordered you to watch the boy, Ricardo."

"I wanted to check on Alcina."

"She's fine. We have the best doctors in the city on our payroll, when she comes to she can just fix the rest herself."

"I'm not worried about her physical health, Cyrus. You should have figured this out by now."

"Everything is still going according to plan. We can still use her to-"

"Cyrus!" Ira slammed her hands down on the table, shaking it. "What even is your plan? Do you know?"

"Of course I know! We get her to have both Randy's and Joseph's powers, then we can bring back the dead. That's the plan. It's that simple. It can't be forced."

"And you aren't taking extreme care of her? You are using her to grab random pawns in the IMB for you? Why? What if she goes off the deep end? Everything's gone if that happens. So chill the fuck out and take care of her."

"Ira."

"Don't."

"Ira."

"Don't call me by that stupid name!" A gust of wind blew past Cyrus's face.

"Why-"

"We've been working like this for how long? And you still treat me like some sort of tool you just sic on someone like a dog. Even that name is a reminder that I am a tool. I am just your wrath, to be thrown at whoever or whatever gets in your way. The girl can be different. So I want her to be different. I want her to have a chance at a normal life when we are done."

"I don't have the luxury to comfort her and set her up for success."

"You don't have the luxury not to. I didn't want to yell at you today, but you just... Urgh! I'm going to go see Alcina."

Ira left the room, slamming the door behind her.

"I guess every child will be rebellious. It's in human nature," Cyrus said. He pulled a small case and a lighter from his pocket. He gave a few deep breaths, trying to calm himself, then opened his eyes. He slowly stepped the few feet over to the table and calmly put his hand on one of the chairs. With a surge, he picked it up and threw it across the room. Then he shoved the table to its side as he continued to throw chairs around while yelling.

After a brief pause in his tantrum and a few heavy breaths. He sat down in one of the chairs left standing, spinning away from the table as he did. He hunched over, planting his elbows on his knees as he sunk into thought.

After a while, he stood up and pulled his phone out of his pocket. He tapped on the screen a few times then held the phone up to his head with a stern expression across his face.

"Arnold, I need you here at the office as soon as possible. Do not delay. Room Alpha." He hung up before waiting for an answer.

He walked out of the room and down the hall, eventually coming to a wide open lobby with elevators for going up the three floors he could see above him. He entered inside the elevator and tapped a hidden button inside the door. The elevator shut and descended below the building.

He stepped into the familiar tunnel system. The floor was the same metal grates keeping him a few inches above some pipes. Other larger pipes lined the walls, sometimes letting a hollow thud echo throughout the thousands of feet of space. The system was a labyrinth for the city's infrastructure, and he had simply pierced into it from his building. He passed a familiar metal door with a wheel on it, and continued on to a simpler door, painted red. Inside was his office that he had met with Ira and Arnold at dozens of times before. It was one of his many command centers, able to have all the information he needed transmitted to him.

Cyrus sat down at his seat then spun around to face the wall of screens. He focused on one, watching as Ira stood next to Alcina in a hospital bed. She stood there for a few moments before turning and leaving, with Alcina still laying motionless on the bed.

He turned around as the metal door squeaked open. Arnold slowly shut it behind him as he walked in, sweat visibly dropping off of him.

"Cyrus! You said it was urgent so I hurried-"

"We need to capture Nero Satou."

"What? Why did you tell me to come all the way over here for-"

"We need to capture him now. Before the end of the day. Before Alcina wakes up. He got away when I had a feeling about him, and then things stopped working out. So we need to capture him."

"Are you sure? Do you have a feeling again?"

"I don't keep you around to second guess me, Arnold."

"Yes sir." Arnold stepped away from the door, sitting down in one of the chairs around the table. "Do we know where he is?"

"No. I'm still concerned about how little information was in his file, and I haven't asked Alcina for a report on him since she got us that informant for the IMB. It's best that she doesn't know now, because I think she'll try to stop us. It's better to ask for forgiveness than permission if it's something you must do."

"How am I supposed to find him without that?"

"He goes to the school doesn't he? Follow him back or something. I'll be waiting for you in this room. Do not return without him."

"Yes sir."

As soon as Arnold left the room, Cyrus banged his arms against the table and threw his face into his palms. He ran his fingers through his hair, slicking it back as pulled away from the table.

"Fuck!" he yelled into the empty room. "I'm so close. I can't fucking let this slip away. This has to work!"

He turned back around to the screens, looking at Alcina laying still in the bed. He had no idea what was happening now, and she presented a serious uncertainty.

***

Arnold pulled a handkerchief from his the pocket of his jacket and wiped it across his face, trying to mop up the sweat from his light jog from the shuttle station. It was the most physical activity he had done in the last three weeks.

He checked his watch, watching carefully as the numbers ticked over from fifty-nine to zero. A purple light surrounded him, with faint white lines of an analog clock, slowly ticking counterclockwise, with the hour hand moving the fastest. Then it stopped, and swirled into a hole floating in the air. As he touched it, he vanished, as though he was squished in an instant and shoved through. He blinked for just a moment, and he was standing in his office, right where he had been yesterday.

Another wave of nostalgia washed over him, the feelings of the past that he latched on to to return to that point. It was his price to return things to where they were, is that he always felt like this, surfacing the desire to go back. It didn't matter if it was a day or a decade, the past always felt better.

As he was coming to, a hand grabbed his shoulder. He panicked, jumping forward a few feet as he spun around to see a familiar face staring at him. A gaunt man with small circular glasses and a particularly wide grin.

"Joseph?" Arnold asked in surprise.

"The one and only. What, you thought a little psychic power like Alcina's was enough to take me out of the game?"

"How are you not contained? I thought Cyrus-"

"Cyrus made a mistake."

"What?"

"He trusted the girl's power too much. Using it not just as a means to an end, but as a tool to deal with his problems. You see, I'm quite a problem, a nail sticking far out of the wood, but there's a problem. I'm not a normal nail. I'm not made for stabbing wood, I'm made for splitting hammers. The girl unfortunately had to suffer some backlash, but I prepped my mind before letting Cyrus try to drag me in."

"Why are you here? I'm dangerous in my own right, you can't intimidate me." Arnold fumbled his hand across his desk, looking for the stapler he had prepped for this situation.

"Cyrus was going to hound me down no matter what until he thought I was under his control again. I don't like that, so I'm going to-"

Arnold found it, sending it disappearing from his fingers with a flash of purple. Joseph stopped for a moment, with a stunned look on his face before twisting it back into a grin. His face split open, spreading open as though he was a giant maw down the middle of his face. His arm reached up and pulled the stapler out from his head and threw it down on the floor as he closed back together.

"As I was saying," Joseph said, "I don't like Cyrus trying to control me, so I'm going to make sure I'm out of his reach. You are lucky I want a messenger."

"What do I tell him?" Arnold had stopped moving around and now just stared at him, terrified.

"I made what I set out to. An angel descended from heaven. The apex predator. It is my masterpiece. So now I don't have a reason to work with him, and I'm not so easy as to just be forced. Oh, and I'm picking up my dog before he sends his own dog to put it down."

"With all due respect, Dr. Mendele, why did you come to tell me anything when you could just disappear? You didn't even have to let him have the idea you were free. Why are you..."

"I'm rubbing it in. Salt into the wound. Cyrus is an old gnarled bastard, that's for sure, but he hasn't matured for all his age. He's got potential, and I like to do things with potential. Unfortunately, it's not so simple as moving a few things around."

"Before you leave, will you help me with something?"

"Rather bold of you, asking for help with something after trying to kill me."

"I need to find Nero Satou."

"Who?"

"A friend of Fetter Young."

"Why would I do that?"

"Aren't you an enemy of Fetter Young? Don't you want to hurt him?"

"I'm certainly his enemy. I wouldn't say that he's mine though. He's a good litmus test to run against, but he isn't anything special like you think he is. He isn't special like anyone thinks he is."

"Why does Cyrus need him so much then? I don't believe Cyrus would so heavily go after some boy that doesn't matter."

"Do you even know what Cyrus' goals are?"

"No."

"Do you know why that is? Do you think it's because he doesn't trust you and that you are biding your time to earn that trust in that pathetic mind of yours?"

"I mean-"

"Because you won't. His goal isn't some grand ideological thing. It's self-centered. He's trying to bring his dead friend back to life because he feels guilty."

Arnold latched on to the feeling. It was a desire to go back to how things were, to bring back the past. It resonated well with him. It took him only a few seconds to accept that as fact.

"So be it. I'm here to use him and his resources while he uses mine. I don't care what he does it for." Arnold tightened his fingers around something, carefully searching for a familiar texture of a bump. He pushed a button, trying his best to hide the maneuver.

"You are just a tool Arnold. You will be thrown away when you are no longer useful to him. Unlike Ira, you aren't even fit to be a dog."

A security officer of the school bust through the door, sending bits of wood from the frame shattering against the floor. As he bust through the door, Joseph vanished into a puff of smoke, as though he had never been there to begin with.

"Find the intruder! He just vanished into smoke! Check the cameras for a lanky man in his late forties!" Arnold commanded the security officers that were now looking around the room in confusion.