He spent the rest of the evening picking classes. Since he'd slept all day with Nikki, Josh wasn't about to fall asleep any time soon. Whittier's website wasn't exactly easy to navigate either—he found more results using a search engine rather than trying to browse their own system.

Well… International Economics seems like the most useful for the future. There's already rumblings about other countries petitioning the United States for magical resources, even though the country doesn't officially have any. All we've got are a few thousand independent people who can kinda-sorta do some tricks, plus a few gods roaming around.

...Wonder what Hailey's up to right now.

As it turned out, Hailey was still in Georgia, doing her thing. He sent off a text, but the news crews desperately following her like tornado chasers gave him a much better idea. The winter storm hadn't hit yet, and seemed to be shifting north, but Hailey was still finding things to do, people to save, fires to quench—the usual.

Wonder where she sleeps at night. Maybe she sleeps in mid-air. Who knows what she can do, the kind of power she's got?

Josh went back to his own life again, pushing away vague daydreams about flying. Whittier wouldn't just let him sign up for classes, even after getting accepted—he was still way past the deadline for winter term, and if he wanted to take any of the classes starting next week, he'd have to get signed approval from his advisor.

And that is… they did assign somebody, right? Not seeing it in any of my emails… ugh.

He decided to just take a guess and picked the primary undergrad advisor for the Economics department, Jose Alvarado. The guy had open office hours as early as the next morning. Perfect. Josh wanted to get right back into it, as quickly as he could. Potential classes prepped and neatly organized, with a schedule arranged to provide him plenty of opportunity for… extracurriculars, Josh switched gears again.

Thinking of Hailey reminded him that technically, her trial wasn't over yet. At the moment, she was being tried in absentia. From the details which made it out to the public, it was very mixed. Everybody knew her conviction was a foregone conclusion now that she'd abandoned the trial, but with a bitter taste given all the good work she was doing. However, Josh had someone with much better access to call on, a new relationship he'd just started building up in the last month.

"Senator?"

"Josh, we've been talking for fuckin' weeks now. Maddie, all right?"

Josh smiled. Maddie reminded him of Jeremy, someone else he'd befriended very quickly. "Just checking in. I wanted to know how Hailey's trial is going."

"Boring. Nothing special. The crazy shit's in your neighborhood," said Maddie. "Felix gettin' out, Ruby and Cinza barreling into our meeting today—"

"You were there?" asked Josh, surprised.

"What, I didn't make the news?" Maddie groaned. "Fuck, I had a great soundbite too. Assholes."

"I wanted to take the temperature in D.C.," said Josh, pulling up his notes on screen. "How bad is this attack on Felix?"

"Not great, but definitely recoverable. The worst you're getting is more about continuing conflict in general, not straight on hate for the awakened. I swear to God some of the shits on the other side of the table are Hendricks-sympathizers or straight up fucking affiliated," she added with audible venom, even through the bad phone connection, "but you're still coasting on a lot of sympathy. Thank whatever you worship that they didn't lay a hand on him."

"Any word from London?" asked Josh, skipping straight over the other trial happening in D.C.

Maddie hesitated for a second before picking the conversation back up. "Fuck, Josh, how many ears you think I got? Only so many hours in the day, and I already spent a few trapped in a plane. I'm not Rachel. I still gotta do my job, you know. I've gotta worry about the rest of the country too."

"Right, sorry." Josh sighed. "Just trying to catch up with everything I missed still."

"Meanwhile I'd love to get off the damn grid for a while." Maddie matched his sigh. "I need to sleep. Early security briefing tomorrow, no idea what the fuck it's about."

"Anything to worry about?"

"Nah, this shit happens all the time. I think they do it sometimes to remind us they can." He could practically hear her eyes rolling from across the country. "See you 'round. Tell my brother I love him next time you get out there."

As soon as she hung up, Josh was already online. He wanted to get more info on the Malton trial, and particularly about how they were handling custody for Malton and Viper. Any precedent, even in London, would hold weight around the world. Malton was awakened, as was his favorite lackey—or ex-favorite. Never would've called Viper turning on him.

It had been a long, long time since Josh last saw Viper prior to the third Summit, way back in Rallsburg. He'd seemed the consummate soldier, the eternal professional mercenary. Betrayal just was not in his cards. I'd give a lot to know what turned him. Of course, without more word from the Laushires—and there wasn't a chance in hell Josh was going to wake one of them up again tonight—all he could do was dive into internet speculation.

Need a better way to communicate between us… secure phones are great, but they're too symmetric and limited. We need something like… oh, I'm a fucking idiot.

They'd had a method all year, until a traitor in the Greywood forced them to shut it down. The website would still have everyone's registration, methods of contact, everything they needed to get a network running again. If the awakened population wasn't increasing anymore, it would be easily sustainable and securable for those who used it. All Josh needed to do was get it online again.

As luck would have it, Josh actually had a contact method for the person responsible, and even better, they were almost certainly awake right now, because they always seemed to be awake. For a while, Josh even wondered if it was Rachel somehow, but he'd eliminated that as a possibility a long time ago.

24fromdowntown: Hey.

tezofarl: hello

24fromdowntown: I think we should put the site back up.

24fromdowntown: The spy's gone, and honestly right now, we seriusly need more communication between everybody.

24fromdowntown: seriously*

tezofarl: are you sure? cinza hadn't reached out yet

24fromdowntown: You know about the blackout, right?

tezofarl: of course

tezofarl: but if she needed to reach me, she'd find a way

24fromdowntown: Yeah, no kidding. But she wanted me to start handling more things lately.

24fromdowntown: And this is my idea. Right now, we just had some awakened attack a guy, and I bet you they used spells they learned off our site.

24fromdowntown: So I want to make sure we can reach out to people like that, and in a way that doesn't require the news media

tezofarl: i _was_ surprised to get your first message

tezofarl: cinza and i have known each other a long time

tezofarl: since before she was cinza

tezofarl: she must trust you a lot to give you this address

24fromdowntown: Can you do it?

tezofarl: it's already done

tezofarl: i also got rid of a few bugs and a trojan that the spy planted before we took it down

tezofarl: just needed to spin the server up and point the domain at it again

tezofarl: i hope this helps

24fromdowntown: Thanks. And just to be clear, Cinza didn't tell me anything about who you are or even where you are.

24fromdowntown: Just gave me the app and the email address to contact.

24fromdowntown: And I don't need to know either, whatever you want

tezofarl: i'm just a friend

tezofarl: good luck josh

A muffled voice from his bedroom door had Josh nearly jumping out of his chair.

"Chatting up Lily?"

"Luke," snapped Josh, a bit more angry than he intended. "Give me some warning, man."

"Sorry…"

Josh winced. His little brother sounded legitimately upset. He swung the door open with a spell, just as Luke had started to turn away. His eyes widened.

"Wow."

He shrugged casually, knowing that would only impress his brother even more. "What's up?"

"I'm just bored," said Luke, shrugging. "Wanna hang out?"

In the past, Josh absolutely would have brushed off his little brother. It wasn't that he didn't like Luke, but he was just always wrapped up in his own crap and never made time for his family. Funny how much thinking you'll never see them again changes things…

There was a game console plugged in next to his computer monitor. Josh levitated a controller up in the air. Luke's eyes followed it up, wide as dinner plates. Without warning, he sent it spinning forward at his little brother, just slow enough to make sure Luke could catch it. He did easily enough, a grin sprouting on his face.

"Think you can finally beat me?" asked Josh, smirking.

As it turned out, Luke could, though not easily. After the third hard-fought one-on-one in a row, they finally turned over to a co-op mode, just for a little break. Unfortunately, that opened up Josh to get all sorts of questions from Luke, about anything and everything related to the last couple years.

It was a wild trip down memory lane, as Josh related—in redacted form, with a lot of hidden names and information just in case—stories of Alpha and Omega, of his own awakening, and the early days of the Council… which to his surprise, he could barely remember. There were huge gaps where things just seemed to be missing, though he was so certain of events around those meetings.

And, of course, his own awakening.

"What was it like?" asked Luke, breathless, though Josh couldn't tell if it was due to the game they were playing or his excitement at hearing about magic.

"Scary," said Josh. "Seriously. You feel like you're gonna die. You ever run out of breath underwater?"

"...Yeah, once," said Luke quietly. He paused the game. "It's like that?"

"Nah, worse, because you know there's air all around you. It's right there, but you can't breathe it, and everything's just disappearing on you." Josh shuddered. "Back then I didn't have anybody to tell me, either. I was like… the first person. Or at least, one of the first."

"And then that girl shows up, right? Grey-eyes?"

"Yup," said Josh. His memory of it was a little hazy and confused, but he remembered that Grey-eyes had been there. She hadn't teleported, but it went the same—she walked him through the rest of his reading until he came back up again, returning to the real world. "Saved my life."

"And then you became the most important guy in the whole city," said Luke excitedly.

He snorted. "Not even close. It wasn't a city, I wasn't that important, and at the end of the day, nobody really knew much about me. Which is gonna stay the same, right?" Josh added pointedly.

"Yeah…"

"I'm serious, Luke. I'm just your brother, not somebody important and connected. The rest of the world shouldn't know about me, okay?"

"I mean…" Luke shifted uncomfortably in his seat. "We already held a memorial and everything for you. The whole church came."

"...Well," said Josh, sighing. "I never really go to church anyway, so that shouldn't be a big deal. I'm just gonna be going to college, mostly."

"Why?"

"...Huh?"

"Why go to college?" Luke seemed honestly confused, which had Josh confused. Their parents had hammered into all three of them the idea that they must go to college, no exceptions. "You're already successful, aren't you?"

"Not really," said Josh. He shrugged. "I don't have a marketable skill, 'cept maybe cooking. Not sure what kind of job I could get without mentioning I'm awakened, and who knows how somebody would react to that, either? I never finished my degree, and I think that's important. Important for you, too," he added, suddenly self-conscious of how much influence he probably had on Luke.

"Yeah…" Luke glanced at his phone. "Oh, another one. My friends have been sending these lately. Saying that awakening's coming back."

"Really?" He frowned. "Can't be true. Trust me, I would know way before the news." Hailey's still trying to find Grey-eyes, for one. I get the feeling she's not coming back 'til she figures out a way to fix Meg. "Can you send me that article?"

Luke forwarded it, and Josh opened the article on his computer. He leaned forward and began to read—and it became clear very quickly just how bogus the thing was.

"Luke, you can't fall for this shi—stuff," said Josh wearily. "Look at this."

"What? It looks like a news site to me…"

"Nah. Check the by-line; that guy's never written anything but clickbait nonsense. Follow the links too, they all just loop back in on themselves. Nobody's actually got an original source, they're all just pointing at each other." Josh sighed. "This is gonna get people killed, if it hasn't already."

"Oh man…" Luke looked upset again. "What if I—"

"Not your fault," said Josh firmly. "Just be careful before you share anything like this. If you want, run it by me first."

"Okay."

"And Luke?" said Josh, as seriously as he could. Luke looked scared—Josh realized he'd never used that tone at home before. It was something he'd developed while on the council, just in case he ever needed to lay down the law. He hadn't needed it much, but it came in handy when he did.

"...Yeah?"

"Do not, under any circumstances," he said, with as much weight under each word as he could manage, "try to awaken until I say it's safe. Don't even go near that stuff, and if you can, keep your friends away too. Got it?"

"...Got it."

Josh grinned. "Now pick the controller back up. Break's over, and you're not winning this time."