The air was awash with emotions, both those wrung tight and those rendered slack to the point of uselessness. People hurrying around in desperation and robotic rhythm. The city was disrupted, distorted, scared of what may come, jaded from what had occurred, and tired of it already. Their heroes had lost, failed to defeat a villain despite all of the faith and demand pressed upon them. And now a nightmare from the past was hiding amongst them like it was still human. Eyes shifted from face to face. Neighbors distrusted neighbors. Fear drove the once cheerful and content to leer at any face they couldn’t recognize, and any hair out of place. The description was clear but still he was already known for disguising himself. And now they all knew full well what was hiding, plotting-

“Yaaawww…”

Waiting in line at the grocery store.

It had been a day or two, it was getting hard to tell, but Seth was still hardly changed from his grand unveiling. Least of all with his nightly bouts of denied sleep. It helped that the faces staring back at him at least looked similar now, but it didn’t stop the haunting feeling they gave off. Too many eyes he knew, even if he never remembered them for long. Too many familiar faces changed and locked in torrential emotion. Too many-

“Next please.”

Seth shook the existential spiraling away.

“Sorry.”

And stepped up to the counter. A small basket of prepacked cereals, sodas, frozen dinners, bread… and sleep aids. He was past the point of sentimentality and survivor’s guilt, he didn’t care if his town was looking on from his subconscious, he was getting a full restful sleep if it was the last thing he could.

The card machine beeped as the clerk tallied up the total, but went ignored as Seth handed exact cash instead. The bank probable wasn’t happy, but screw ‘em, he needed his savings! The clerk counted out the change as he kept his tired eyes on his waiting bags, a familiar form burning his peripheral vision. A familiar tug trying to pull him back to that blasted moonscape, that burning forest, those-

“Hrrgh”

He shut his eyes tight, clenched and took his change in a cupped hand. The other forced back open and scoping up plastic replacement for his basket. Apparently this store was running that same donation drive, the same placard, the same decals. The same blind callousness that had kept him inside most of his adult life, just enhanced beyond simple memories. His filled hand shoved his change into his pant pocket before pulling up into his face, desperately rubbing that daytime nightmare away. Rubbing softly against the brown hair crowning his head, narrowly fading it back to white as his focus frayed. But at least that ordeal was over with.

The streets of Kadia weren’t too much better though. An unconscious, unspoken tension still permeated as people walked the streets. The power grid was toasted, crews could only do so much at a time, so some sectors were still a little dark. The cars on the road though were a lost cause. If Seth had been a betting man, he would have bought stocks in every car dealer in the city. But even then that investment was iffy, as people just chose to walk to wherever they needed. An adaptive attitude already burned in by the disruptive EMP attacks. Or the daily life of super powered villainy. At least Seth could avoid the guilt of culpability, since technically Resent was the one that broke everything. All he did was siphon off a little too much. Still, the effects were felt by everyone.

The air was getting colder, wetter, dreary. Compounding. Surprisingly comfortable… Well maybe not surprisingly anymore. The whole extra anatomy thing certainly had its perks. Seth still kept an old coat on from his apartment just for coverage though, but the cold wasn’t an issue. It was still the soup of paranoia that the city was starting to stew in. Something he couldn’t help feel guilty for, least of all since he was the one who pushed them into the pot. The same shifty distrusting eyes scanned faces, hats, coats too big to warrant, unneeded umbrellas. Everything even the slightest bit out of place. Eyes that were unsure of what they would do if they saw their watched for target, but if their heroes couldn’t defeat this menace then they would take things into their own hands.

The industrial sector was at least less crowded, nice and out of the way of it all. Though also a good deal emptier these days. Factories and metal works don’t fare well without electricity or workers willing to commute by foot. Still the fires of industry must go on, and people still need to get paid. A few trucks drove the wide streets, ferrying supplies and products about, work yards filled with the sounds of manual labor and gradual reconstruction, and the smell of restarting furnaces and burning metal filled the air. Even though Seth was only stopped at the outskirts.

His apartment still looked all too fitting and yet woefully out of place. Still stood empty except for its only two tenets. But boy o boy was it fucking better than staying in Eagleville! Seth climbed the stoop, his garage space unneeded now and safer locked up. The mail slots were still labeled his and Ms. Mahan’s, but he did all he could to avoid her for now. Plenty of years of passing her on the stairs told him enough of her routine, and a little bit of power expenditure kept the noise to a minimum. But he knew his luck was running thin, and he’d have to own up to her eventually. He just hoped he could explain it well enough…

‘Shit, I’ve got a list now. Hopefully Aegis takes her time getting here. There is way too much to go through.’

His door slid open without a sound, relocked slowly so the thunk wouldn’t resound. The walls were thickened up a bit and given the same piezoelectric treatment he gave his other residence. Less yellowing on the wall paper, less dust caking his home, and a general sense that he had a comfortable place to sleep again. He looked down though to his full plastic bag, hoping that the pills could help with the latter more than the former. But that was for later. Now though he’d rather just watch TV and get away from this world.

The one burning and yet still not quite on fire. If there was space for it, Aegis’ footsteps would have echoed through the halls with all the “done with it” attitude she had on offer. All the energy of someone who wasn’t in the mood to be bother right now. But they didn’t. Couldn’t. The halls of the periphery, The Hill, were bustling. Supers, civilian liaisons, support staff, and general population who slipped in with the show of a badge and a purpose. People gathered about, hurried to their destinations, demanded of their guides, and leered at the scenery and each other. Advocates for the people, lawyers looking for cases, politicians looking for failures, volunteers looking to help, and heroes just trying to do their jobs. It wasn’t quite an upheaval, but the popular sentiment was seeping in with no subtle façade. And Aegis was not going to give in to it.

She stormed passed groups and through tightening thoroughfares, giving nothing to gawk or demand of but the tied dirty blond hair flowing in her wake. And the standoff simmer that kept even the forceful and ambitious at bay. A quick turn and forced open door freed her from the growing claustrophobia of the whole sale shakedown occurring outside, yet simply dropped her into the mess she’d made herself. With help at least.

“Are they still out there?”

Alex was sat at a table across the retrofitted ready room, computer terminal hiding her from the door but offering little protection otherwise.

“Hhgh. Yes…”

The simmer faded, but the exacerbation remained.

“Please tell be you found anything on your end.”

Alex’s expression shifted, but not quite to readied shame. More like…

“I don’t really know?”

Aegis pulled up to her and wheeled to her screen, database search up and looking for any hint of the phrase Seth left for them. A few too many hits for the lost and abandoned, but it was something to work with.

“So… was Omnimax that much of a bust?”

Aegis scooped up a chair and flopped back like a released marionette only half propped up to look at the results before her. A clear enough message for Alex to take and sulk, and join in the search. A band called The Lost and Abandoned, a lost and found store listing, three different orphanages and foster centers, all manner of other answers to the wrong questions. At this point their search was hitting dead end after dead end, and they were forced to scour the internet search engines for even the slightest hints.

Old news articles, old police reports, gangs going by some combination of the words, more stores opening and closing with them, but nothing they could definitively say was what they were looking for. And their time was far from theirs alone. At any moment any number of people could storm in, demanding answers, demanding results, accusing dereliction, or just looking for a release from the tension they’d been left with. Aegis drooped her head and frazzled her hair, frustration with the uncertainty of it all driving her down. And back through everything she knew about Seth. He was alone when she found him, and later he said he lost his parents in the crisis. He was only partly lying given everything else, so he was definitely an orphan. But the results for lost and abandoned offered up a lot of options and not a lot of hope. No database files for a child of his description and his name… his… Aegis realized she didn’t even know his full name. She shook the thought away, it didn’t matter. But still, what else was she missing about-

“…hey…ugh.”

Aegis looked up at Alex, following her eye line back to the screen. A fairly recent newspaper article about the closing of an orphanage with their search terms in the name. An actually good article about it finding the last of its wards a home after… after the influx from the crisis. Aegis pick herself up and read deeper. The orphanage was old before the crisis even hit, dilapidated and behind the times. And situated… in the industrial sector. Where the only powersuit manufacturing facilities were. Aegis pushed Alex slightly aside and put the full name of the place into the database search. Marrow’s Home for the Lost and Abandoned. But despite the exact nature of the search, it just arrived at the same shotgun spread they got before. This place was outside the database… Or deleted from it.

“No wonder it’s been so damn hard to find!”

She shifted gears, bringing up maps of the sector and trying to find the address based on the photos in the article. A simple task given the fact the orphanage was a century older than the surrounding buildings. A few small factories and ancillary offices surrounded it, recognizable from the street view photos. And just like that they finally had a lead.

Aegis looked over at Alex going over things for herself, only looking up as she felt the exacerbation finally relent from her. Both smiled for what felt like the first time in days, but quickly Aegis shifted. Her relief igniting the fire suppressed for too long by this entire shitshow of a result.

“What do you say we get the hell out of here?”

Alex lit up slightly.

“Hopefully this ends up better than the last place you dragged me to.”

“Hey, for first missions I’d say you got it pretty good.”

“I can’t get the smell of saltwater and human shit out of my suit.”

“Well… this one should definitely be better.”