***

It was a lost world. Both in the scene that it was this hidden location that humanity has yet to reach, and the fact that it was lost pieces of the world.

Parts of neighborhoods. Extant outposts. Commercial buildings. Crushed up. Slurred together. Moving not on their own, but on the ground that they littered.

Billie led them to her camp, pierced on what was the roof of a house being grinded away slowly by the ground. She quickly made firewood, using a lighter—something Jackie hasn’t seen in a long time, using the scrap that was hanging from her shirt. Lighting it, tossing it into the wood, and a blaze formed.

“The mines are still moving,” Billie said to no one in particular. “It just takes a long time for it to get through something and they can’t get through everything all at once.”

She sat down on the black shingles. And watched each girl she just met make a place for themselves. Widespread and divided.

“Well, I know uh, y’all don’t wanna talk right now, not to each other…” Billie began. “So I’ll start the conversions, I guess…”

Jackie was looking down and heard a voice that she didn’t remotely expect to hear.

“How do we…” River tried to find the right words. “…Talk about your situation?”

“I mean, we all know it, by all means, do it,” Billie shrugged. “I’m numb to it.”

“…Sorry. About your mother. That would’ve driven me insane…”

“Yeah, your Mom being a siVis user that spirited away a whole train of people and the guilt that comes, yeah, that would’ve been enough…” Billie quipped. “But no. Media circus had to come in, add to that too.”

“Did you ever know what truly happened…? Did she know she had that ability?”

“We know just as much as you guys—” she quickly rose her hands in frustration, not knowing what to do with them. Herself. “She was literally a normal Mom to me, no hints of that stuff whatsoever, she was tryna make it raising like, 7 kids—if she knew she could teleport—she would’ve fucking used it on us.”

A sigh filled the air. With the echoing to match.

“It’s fucked—I mean, was… Didn’t even have a body to bury or something. She’s gone and we’ll never know what happened. Now she’s just a high-profile siVis case than an actual fucking person anymore. Family went crazy, we were at each other’s throats, barely talking anymore even when we were in the house. And the fucking interviews. Michael Moore-wannabe fuckers trying to get me or my siblings to slip to prove their conspiracy theories…”

Billie quickly hugged her legs. A silence hung amongst the sounds of writhing ground with the crackling of fire being drowned out.

“…That’s why I fell for it,” Billie continued. “What he told me.”

Everyone perked up.

“So you actually do know who this guy is?” Maddie asked.

“Well, tell us his name!” Aiko cut in after.

“Damien Darrius,” Billie looked at the roaring fire. “It was when he was about to embark on this crazy mission thing. He told us—me… Maybe she came here, with the other people on that train. She teleported and like, hopped over here. He trusted me with that information when it was supposed to be all hush-hush. That meant the world to me because he fucking said something to me other than ‘I’m sorry’ or ‘she took them to Hell’ or some shit. An actual solution. And then he disappeared too.”

“This was earlier, then…” River rubbed her chin. “Not now, so how did you get here now…?”

“Long story short, family reached the breaking point. So I left. With friends who were fed up with shit too, we just like, made a pact in just leaving our shitty lives behind and making a new one. I had—we had camping supplies before all of this happened and it’s why I survived so long—but I’m cutting… Yeah, so back to the answer… I heard him. He called to me when we were at a park for the night. Only I could hear him and… Convinced my friends that maybe we could get siVis along the way and—y’know, make life easier… Then he opened a way in… We got played… And they uh. They all died and I survived. Despite causing all of this shit to happen to begin with.”

Her usually fiery eyes were moist, beginning to flood with tears. Jackie looked on, horrified—crushed—filled with more guilt somehow.

“I’m… I’m sorr—” Jackie couldn’t get through that apology.

“You don’t need to be sorry, what you need to give me is info,” Billie bore into her with her eyes, but they were too covered with wetness, too puffy and red to covey intimidation and malice. “Because I need siVis so I can tear that fucked up man apart—so I could actually avenge them and do something that would make them happy… So they didn’t go for nothing!”

Jackie lowered her head.

“We’re not the ideal siVis users. We went out looking to gain ours too. But we fucked it up—we didn’t even like, trip and fall into a Shift or whatever. It changed paths, we thought things were over, and we got caught in some glitch that no one will literally ever know about. After all that—we still managed to fuck it up because we weren’t meant to have it in the first place. Then a Shift-like disaster happened, then us struggled to survive not knowing that our powers were broken, and even after all that—we learned that we were at the bottom of the rung anyways. Not a true siVis user, and not even human anymore. In the nebulous middle. Failures without a definition, because we’ll fuck that up too.”

“…Well that sucks—” Billie was wiping her eyes.

“You wanna know what really sucks--?” Maddie chimed in.

Jackie stood up.

“Do not. Go there. You are not ready for the consequences—”

“It’s fine, because neither are you—” Maddie talked over Jackie repeating that she wasn’t ready for the consequences. “Simply put, this bleeding heart asshole keeps getting us into shit because she can’t handle losing or thinks that she’s this massive hero—”

“A LADY DIED IN MY FUCKING HAND, MADISON, AND YOU’RE TOO MUCH OF A BITCH TO UNDERSTAND THAT!”

“And you never met her up until that point!” Maddie yelled back. “You would’ve never seen her again anyways, you would’ve never seen these people again regardless! You don’t know if she’s a fucking racist, or gay basher, or nothing! Your so called hero shit turning out just to be that—shit!”

Jackie just stared at her.

“You were wrong. You really are a heartless bitch. And I could prove it right now.”

Maddie looked up to the girl that stood heads above her as if they were nose-to-nose.

“I dare you to do it—”

“SHUT THE FUCK UP!” Tracy screamed. “SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP!”

Her fear immediately struck at Jackie, causing her to stand down. And by the glance she gave Maddie, now suddenly sweating, Tracy’s fear had a stranglehold over her too.

“IF YOU KEEP FIGHTING LIKE THIS, I SWEAR TO CHRIST, I WILL TAKE YOUR ENERGY AND I’LL LET BILLIE HERE BE THE LEADER INSTEAD-!”

“D-do I have to send in references before I do it, or-?” Billie tried to defuse the tension with a joke.

Tracy was left panting, looking at Jackie and then Maddie with a frightful stare that was enraged.

“Honestly,” River crossed her arms, stopping before remembering her arm has metal baked onto it. “Every time we meet, day in and day out, it’s you two. Arguing the same points. Maybe that’s why we’re stuck in this time loop, you both can’t seem to move on.”

“Man Brooke, I didn’t know you understood human emotions. Good for you!”

Jackie felt everything drain from her, but it was… Different. She had energy, it wasn’t being taken… Just that something was pushing her down. Making her sink low.

She looked at River, who just looked away.

“Yeah. Funny, that. Forget I said anything, I guess.”

“Will do~” Maddie spat back cheerfully.

Aiko just stared at Maddie with a disapproving glare. Jackie felt the sense of thrill, her heartbeat was elevated. It felt like Aiko doing this was the same as scaling a crane to fix it with no safety equipment.

“We don’t need some freak accident to ever see what you’re thinking, Solomon. You’re unhappy and you want everyone else to feel how you feel anyways. You refuse to let yourself be happy, and even then it’s extremely shallow.”

“Rich coming from the chick that fucking wants to jump off skyscrapers and nearly kill herself so she can be turned on!”

“Funny,” Aiko shot back. “You’re literally doing it, right now.”

But after a while, Jackie felt awash of relief. Conquering the rising heartbeat.

Aiko pointed at Jackie.

“You felt how she felt—and you threw it back in her face. What she did was wrong—but if I felt like she did? I would’ve done something worse! You can’t handle that! You can’t handle that she’s going through much more than what your shitty worldview--!”

“You want something to psycho-analyze, huh?!” Maddie got up. “I’ll give ya’ something to fucking psycho-analyze!”

It was like a wave. Jackie suddenly hunched over in pain. It wasn’t something aching specifically, it was just a persistent and ever-present… Burden. Everything hurt. All at once.

It caused everyone but Billie to double over, twitch, hold themselves—and it lasted for minutes.

Until it ceased, and Maddie sat back down.

“Now fuck off.”

Jackie slowly recovered but was looking at Maddie with sorrow.

“I’m—Maddie,” Jackie stuttered out. “You can’t live like this…”

“Too bad. I didn’t have a choice.”

Jackie sighed. Echoing off the empty mines again.

“okay uh—” Billie cut it. “There is NO way for it to not be awkward after that but… How do you—like, catch me up. You’re sharing emotions…?”

Jackie looked at her melted CAST. “We had these devices that were supposed to help us get back on track, to monitor our siVis activities. When we crossed over here, it fucked up—It somehow merged our CASTs together in a link.”

“Right… How did you figure?”

Jackie pointed at Tracy. “Well, she was out, and yet… I was screaming and running and… As you regrettably saw, I don’t like doing all of that. Sure there’s the idea that you can’t control your emotions but it wasn’t me.”

“gee thanks for that call out—” Tracy quipped under her breath.

“Man… So how did it happen? Why?”

“It’s like what someone said to us before we went out to do this… The scary thing about the Noumena is the aftermath, the things we can’t predict. This is one of them.”

Billie huffed to herself. “So, a dumbass girl with siVis users that are broken. Our odds aren’t really good.”

“…But maybe we can do something to fix that,” Jackie looked up at Billie. “You have experience here. You can direct us, guide us…”

“Sure, that much is easy…” Billie responded.

“But… What if we could use this connection to—like, figure out what’s holding back each of us…”

“It’s so invasive, though…” Tracy mumbled out.

“We have to try something, Tracy…” Jackie reasoned. “Everything that we brought here is gone, every single tool… The only thing left is us, and we’re crippled. More crippled.”

“… I’m willing to be first,” River talked again. “Whatever the exercise is gonna be. I might as well be good for something.”

Jackie was going to argue, but she shook her head lightly. She leaned in, thinking about… Being more like herself? Extending that out towards River.

But something cut in.

Isolation. Frustration. Wanting destruction.

This feeling—it caught Jackie completely off-guard. She wanted to stop and ask River about this, but she was completely enraptured. It was so confusing.

It didn’t help matters when she saw a series of pictures, scenes of one’s life.

This was not River’s life.

Rejection letters. Being overshadowed by so-called peers. Straddled with what they considered to be pseudo-science nothingness, becoming an Extant pawn. They were meant to be the next great mind when everyone else lost theirs. Who knows, they could’ve remade the Earth after society falls. But now he’s apart of this madness, tasked to dig into reality—whatever that meant. Years upon years, wasted time and doing other men’s dirty laundry. And yet he’s the weird one, the outsider, the one to worry about. But he showed them, his so-called team. He hid as they died, went mad realizing that there’s only more to explore, to explain to experience. Now he had the only knowledge that no one else knows.

The failure, the loser, finally getting his due.

Jackie snapped out of it, holding her sweating head.

“Oh god—the fuck was that?! Guys—”

Everyone was staring upwards, causing Jackie to crane her head back.

It was the visage of Damien, all red and wispy, above their head. Watching them the whole time.

He soon faded away.

“Motherfucker--!” Billie rose up.

Jackie rose too. “Billie… He’s a messed up guy. These people—those kinds of people, all they want to do is to make everything just as messy. In order for this to work, we have to keep our cool.”

“I don’t think I can do that, man…” Billie said, dejected. It made Jackie’s jaw clinch.

“Then we’ll teach you, as you teach us…” Jackie answered.

“We know how to do that--?” Maddie quipped.

“…We have the equipment that can do that…” Jackie meekly admitted.

Billie laughed. It was nice for Jackie to hear.