Anomalies: Control

Life wasn’t exactly easy in Skye, but it wasn’t much worse than Greg and Laurel’s house. He’d say he missed going outside, but with his eyes he’d rarely gone outside anyway. It was too much trouble trying to explain his non-Anomaly status to people who never believed him anyway.

He’d say he missed fresh air and the parks and the easy access to stores, but same token: no going outside meant he never really enjoyed those things like his foster siblings had. But at least he wasn’t longing for it like he started to realize a lot of the other residents did.

Sticking close to Rune proved to be a blessing and a curse, depending on the day and his mood. The shine she took to him meant people gave him a wide berth; no one took issue with him, no one challenged his staying in the building, no one questioned him. But it also meant people didn’t trust him, and the ones that tried, fluctuated between trust and distance.

Except Banshee. Her endless cheeriness and seemingly neverending crusade to make him one of them instead of one with Rune meant she was at his side almost every time he was away from Rune…Which admittedly didn’t happen often and was usually because Rune was throwing a ‘I need to be alone’ fit. He wasn’t naïve enough to miss the fact it happened after specific incidents: when he wanted to practice with her, when she’d had a nightmare - which happened more in the last few weeks than in the few months before he’d left Greg and Laurel’s house, even taking into account all the kids in the house - when she’d fallen into thought, or when she had to be around Tracker and Kane for too long. He didn’t know what sort of history was between Rune and the two Skye residents, but whatever it was made her edgy and unstable.

Banshee he could tell was one of the ones that missed her outside life the most. He hadn’t asked what had driven Banshee to Skye, or even how old she really was. To give her credit, she did try to bridge the gap between him and the rest of Skye, but he had a feeling that unless he stopped lingering around Rune and using her room to escape the silence of the tower while he slept, they would continue to keep their distance. It was kind of funny, for all he wasn’t asking her, she only seemed to hold back one question: what exactly was his and Rune’s relationship. He didn’t necessarily want to offer up the information, still pretty certain Rune didn’t want him talking about her to others, but he wished Banshee would ask so he could let her know nothing was going on- romantically anyway- between him and Rune. Not that he was thinking about that kind of stuff, necessarily. He just - it was the logical assumption - the assumption he’d make if he were in Banshee’s place. But nothing was going on. He was still not sure most times if she’d laugh with him or scowl at him. But to give her credit, she never raised a hand to him, which really only made him suspect she’d had more than a few hands raised to her before. Just more questions he couldn’t bring himself to ask.

But Banshee tried, and he tried to be nice and unthreatening enough to set the others at ease, and life moved on. The residents in Skye seemed surprisingly unaffected by what was going on outside the tower. Everyone seemed content to assume they were safe in the tower. And if Banshee was a reliable source, they’d had people rotating in and out of the tower for years with no problems from the authorities. Tech always seemed at ease but alert, like an alpha wolf who was sure their territory was empty of other packs, but knew that that could change in a moment.

Though with peace came restlessness, and he started to crave socialization that wasn’t just Rune, Tech, or Banshee. He came from a houseful of people, friends (even if the title was technically ‘former’ friends now), makeshift family; he couldn’t do this lone wolf thing much longer. So he watched and debated and tried to decide who was best for approaching that wouldn’t shut him down immediately.

“Hey Charge,” the blonde barely looked up from her book, and he smiled, sitting next to her. “What’s up?”

It was a strange feeling, getting used to being addressed by and learning to respond to a new name. He’d been Cole all his life, and now he couldn’t be anymore, not to anyone he met after today. He had to be Charge, an Anomaly and nothing more. It was comforting in a way, to know that no one would be able to link him to the random foster kid with a different name, but that didn’t make him feel much better about all but completely losing his identity.

But that was neither here nor there. “Hey Lisa, not much. Just wondering if you had a minute. You’re one of the few that talk to me and all, so…”

She looked up with a smile too, and closed her book as she tried not to laugh. “This is true. You pick some scary friends, can you blame them?”

“Hey, in my defense I’ve tried to be nice.” He pointed out, and she failed in containing her laughter and adjusted herself so she was lying on her stomach on the floor of the makeshift library, facing him and her chin in her hands.

“Also true. But it doesn’t help when Rune’s silently stewing in the background. So what can I do to help?”

“Provide me with some human contact other than Rue and Banshee?” He asked, giving her puppy dog eyes. She laughed again and smacked him with her book.

“Stop that, you’re a grown man you’re better than that!”

“Is that a yes?”

“Yes, it’s a yes. So pick your poison, what do you want to talk about? Weather, pasts, futures, others’ favorite topics so you can trick them into talking to you and becoming your friend?” She trailed off liltingly, and he laughed too, leaning back against the bookshelf.

“Wow, so many options. Pasts, futures, is there anything you aren’t willing to talk about?” Everyone he’d met so far had been secretive, almost obsessively so, and while he couldn’t blame them- he himself had too much at risk to be going around giving his life story- it made for stilted conversations when he managed to get someone to talk to him.

She shrugged. “Not really.”

“Ok then… powers. I never quite caught what yours was.”

“I’m a Mentalist. I have what Tech generously classifies as ‘limited telepathy’.” He opened his mouth to ask what exactly that meant, but she didn’t need him to. “It means I can read people’s thoughts, but I can’t communicate with them via thoughts, and I can’t control their thoughts. It’s more like… listening to the radio. You can hear what’s going on, but that’s it.”

“Sounds like you got robbed in the telepathy department.”

She shrugged lightly. “It’s a double edged sword. I’ve met a few telepaths, and I’ve noticed the real telepaths, the ones that can talk and hear and control, they also can’t help when they hear. A lot of them try to isolate themselves because in public they just hear everything, or hear bits and pieces randomly that they didn’t intend to. I don’t do that. I have to focus on listening, and it makes it harder to find what I want, and I can only hear whatever active thoughts are occurring, but I’d rather that than to have a couple dozen different minds speaking to me all at once.”

“I see what you mean. That sounds like hell.”

“I imagine it is. The telepaths I’ve met have learned to deal with it, but it makes me shudder just thinking about it.” She said, her shoulders shivering a little. “But my version’s pretty useful. The trick,” she said, looking up at Cole with shining eyes, excited to share an insight to her life and her power, “is to find someone quiet. An observer. You can’t go just jumping into the first mind you hear, and it’s best not to choose a leader.”

“Not choose a leader? But wouldn’t they know what’s happening better than anyone else?”

“Yes, but. Leaders are always focused on everyone else, everything else going on. And since I can only hear the active, top of the mind thoughts, they’re almost always ‘this guy doesn’t get it’, ‘this moron’s going to get himself killed’, ‘now here’s a good one’, but almost never actual planning thoughts. You just get the thoughts that pertain or that are what they’re actually saying at the moment. I mean if you catch them in the middle of a planning session, you’re golden, but otherwise you’re screwed. Observers, on the other hand, aren’t speaking, they’re silently thinking about what’s going on, who’s doing what, who’s going to be doing what. They’re perfect for spying on.”

“You talk like you’ve done a lot of spying before.”

“I used to.” She said easily. Everything about Lisa seemed easy, calming. He’d made a good choice in finding someone to talk to. “I used to be a part of an underground network of Anomalies in South Dakota, and we’d do reconnaissance and other fancy words for spying on the army base that’s located out there. That’s actually where Suki and I met.”

“Oh?”

Lisa nodded, her smile turning fond. “She was on the army base. They’d been using her to translate messages and such for them between countries. We always assumed they put her in South Dakota because who would think to look there?” She laughed a little. “She was too skinny back then, stress made it hard for her to eat, and she’s really particular about food, so army barrack meals didn’t really agree with her. But she was still darling, like a china doll. Which she loathes when I call her because she’s Japanese,” she added with a louder laugh, “but whatever. So I decided we were going to smuggle her out.”

“But you didn’t even know if she wanted to leave.”

She shrugged. “I was younger, and had a puppy crush. It didn’t occur to me that she’d want to stay. So we studied, and researched, and listened,” she gave him a wink, “And one night one of the boys, Vector, slipped himself and me in, and we snuck into her room.” She rolled to her back, laughing at the memory. “Oh my god I thought she was going to shoot us. She’d heard us coming and she had a rifle pointed at the door and her hand hovering over an alarm lever. Took us five minutes to convince her not to shoot us and ten to convince her to come with us.”

“But she did?”

Lisa nodded. “She did. She likes to joke that she was ‘bewitched by the little blonde pixie’ that randomly showed up in her room, begging her to go with her. And I let her say that because hey, she came and I won so ha.”

He laughed with her. “Well as long as you won, right?”

“Exactly. See I knew I liked you, Charge.”

“So Suki’s an omnilinguist, you said?” She nodded. “How’s that work? She just hears a language and bam, it’s in her head perfectly?”

“It’s far from perfect. We’re not one hundred percent sure how it works, to be honest, but between what Suki’s told us and what Tech’s pieced together from all his studies-”

“Studies? Sorry, but studies?”

“Yeah. Tech’s been all over the globe, met dozens upon dozens of Anomalies. That’s how he knows so much about our different types.”

“Whoa.”

“Yeah. So anyway, from what we can tell, it’s more like she’s a form of Mentalist too. She hears the language, and her brain subconsciously takes the language, the syntax, the infliction from the speaker’s mind too fast to realize what’s happening, and transfers it to her brain. But it’s definitely not perfect. Like when she learned French, oh lord she was so annoyed.” She had rolled back to her stomach, but the constant fidgeting wasn’t bothering Cole; he liked that she was comfortable enough around him to be laughing and sharing. “She first heard French from an Irishman. He was half French but grew up in a bilingual house in Ireland. So he had a native understanding of the language but a heavy Irish accent, and that’s exactly how Suki learned it!” She shrieked a laugh. “So you see this gorgeous Japanese girl, speaking perfect French in the heaviest Irish accent you can imagine!”

“You know,” a new voice spoke up from the doorway, and both turned to see Suki standing there, looking playfully annoyed. “Calling me gorgeous will not make up for the fact that you’re laughing at me, missy.”

“Aww, did I hurt your feelings laughing about your French accent?” Lisa lilted back, holding her arms out like a child asking to be picked up. With a roll of her eyes, Suki came further into the room and settled next to Lisa, letting the other girl roll to her back so her head could lay in the dark haired girl’s lap. And it was Suki who asked the question he was surprised Lisa hadn’t already. She seemed more focused than the first time they’d met, and he wondered if that was an effect of being around Lisa, if she paid more attention because Lisa was.

“So you asked about ours, your turn Charge. How’s your ability work?”

“Honestly? I don’t even know.” He shrugged. “I know I somehow charge up other people’s abilities, but I don’t mean to and I don’t have control over it. Sometimes it’s easy, like when we practiced with Hawk and she just got her hawk senses while she was still human. Other times it’s really not good. When Rune and I touched the first time, before I knew I was an Anomaly, her power went berserk and trashed an entire street. So… I don’t know much about it yet.”

“Don’t worry, most of us didn’t. We had people to help us out.”

“Some of us better people than others…” Lisa lilted teasingly, but Suki didn’t look amused at her playfulness.

“They were quite nice to me at the barrack, and you know that. Better than those crazies you left.”

Lisa looked back to Cole, defending herself to him rather than Suki. “Ok in my defense they didn’t start off so radical; they got steadily crazier over the years. When I started with them, they were mostly normal.”

“They were an underground militia group!” Suki laughed.

“Fighting for the greater good!”

“By whose definition?”

Lisa twisted her lips and wrinkled her nose, refusing to answer that, and Cole was trying not to laugh when he noticed Gaia at the door, gesturing for him. He leaned in toward the two arguing girls, interrupting them for a second. “I’ll be back.” He said, standing and heading to Gaia as the bickering girlfriends barely acknowledged his departure. “Hey Gaia, everything alright?”

She nodded with a small smirk. “Yeah, I just heard the ‘good guys bad guys’ debate flare up, and trust me, once they start they just go back and forth for like an hour. I thought I’d do you a favor and save you.” She looked a little wary, like she wasn’t sure she wanted to keep talking to him, but she wasn’t leaving and he decided to jump at the opportunity while it was here.

“Thanks for that. Are you doing anything?”

“I was going to my garden.” There was an awkwardly long pause before she added, “You can come if you want.”

“I’d love to see it.”

She nodded, still looking unsure of the decision she’d made, but willing to give him a chance. “Come on then.” She turned to head toward the stairwell, and he followed after her, up a few flights until they were on a different floor, studying her in the silence. She was pretty, as embarrassing as it was that that was one of the first things he noticed about her, with fluffy, reddish brown hair, warm brown eyes and freckled, almost terra-cotta toned skin. She glanced at him as she reached the door she apparently wanted, and he quickly looked back to the door as though he hadn’t been watching her, and she gave him an odd look as she let him onto the floor.

There were still the wall to wall windows, but instead of bullpens and makeshift campsites, or gym and training equipment, there were lined boxes filled with plants. It was a little garden utopia in the middle of an office floor. “Whoa.”

He’d earned a smile. “Yeah. It’s nice up here. And the best part; most people don’t care for the plants, so it’s usually nice and quiet, too.”

“Nice.” He trailed after her as she wandered down the rows, letting her hand trail along the tips of the different plants and flowers, and he watched with a growing smile as the plants shifted and trembled, some going as far as to reach toward her drifting hands. “That’s a cool trick.”

She looked back at him for a moment as though she didn’t know what he meant, but smiled as she saw where he was looking. “Yeah. They like me. I keep them alive, healthy. They know that.”

“Are they like pets?” He asked, reaching to touch a leaf, a little disappointed when it didn’t move, even though he’d expected it. He wasn’t a plant elemental, he couldn’t expect to have the same effect Gaia did. “Like, do they feel or can you tell what they’re feeling?”

She tried to smother a laugh. “No. It’s not like that. They’re not pets. I can just… feel, when they’re sick, or lacking something, and I can heal them without need whatever it is they’re missing, sunlight or water or what have you.”

“That must have been weird, while you were growing up I mean.”

She shrugged. “Kind of. I knew I wasn’t like other kids, but it mostly just made me seem like I had a green thumb. No one really thought much of it.”

So she’d grown up with other people, other people who weren’t Anomalies. That was interesting. He wondered if she’d just had a false negative, or if her powers had cropped up late, or if she’d just been ignored for a while because her ability was so innocuous.

She seemed to realize her casual comment had given away a hint at her past, and she narrowed her eyes at him teasingly. “Well played, Charge. Your turn. Did you grow up with your ability?”

He shook his head. “Up until I met Rune, I never knew I had one at all.”

“But people must have assumed…”

He bit down on the inside of his cheek, lowering his too-bright eyes and nodding. “Yeah. Often.” He muttered, looking back down at the plants. One, a ground cover that looked like vines layered over each other, reached a vine up to him, tangling around his fingertips, and he grinned in surprise, looking up to see Gaia hiding a small smile. “That’s pretty cool.”

She ran a hand through her dark, thick hair, hiding her face a little as she turned back to the plants and continued her rounds. “I think so. It’s not very different from just being a good gardener if you think about it-”

“Gaia!”

Both Anomalies turned at the shout from the door, both expressions drawn and worried, waiting for whatever bomb was about to be dropped on them, but all that happened was the blonde boy from earlier, Lights, came skidding into the room, a grin stretched across his lips. “There you are I’ve been looking for you are you seriously up here with the plants again you know they’re not going anywhere- Charge, hey, what are you doing up here?”

There was no sign of the studiously concentrating boy he’d met in passing with Banshee. The Lights who’d barely greeted him had seemed quiet, focused, intent on his light game, but the boy in front of him- how old had Banshee said he was? He was older than Cole was, he remembered that much, nineteen or twenty- was jittery and grinning and excitable, bouncing from foot to foot and barely pausing between sentences.

Cole smiled, but before he could respond, Gaia was groaning in annoyance. “What do you want, toad?”

“Tracker’s looking for you Weed.” The boy- no way he could be over sixteen, he acted like a child- volleyed back, making Gaia roll her eyes.

“Wow, plant jokes, you’re soooo clever.” She groused as she started back toward the door, walking right to Lights and pushing him back toward the door with her, making him stumble back. “C’mon, move your ass, I’m not leaving you up with my babies alone.”

“What, you afraid they’re gonna like me better than you?” Lights laughed, though made no move to fight her as she pushed him.

“No, I’m afraid you’re going to almost drown them again-”

“Oh my god it was one time let it go already!”

Cole was laughing as he trailed after the bickering couple, and Gaia shot him a halfhearted glare. “Don’t laugh, it only encourages the little cretin.”

“Blah blah blah you love me, stop denying it Weed.”

“Stop with that stupid nickname!”

It went on like that the entire way back down the stairs and into the main floor, but Gaia got distracted as Tracker called to her and she trotted over, leaving Lights with Cole. Tracker didn’t look happy to see Cole with the other two, and she kept her narrowed eyes on him as she muttered to Gaia. Gaia, to her credit, shot Cole a smile as she responded to Tracker, obviously less concerned about Cole than the older woman.

Half because he was truly curious, and half because he wanted to prove to Tracker he wasn’t a threat, he turned back to Lights. “So what’s between you and Gaia?”

The other boy cocked his head. “What?”

“Are you two-?” He let his voice trail off, not sure if he was overstepping his boundaries, and was glad he’d only alluded when Lights’ face scrunched up like a child who’d just taken cough medicine.

“What? Ew! No, gross, no way!” He made a gagging sound and Cole hurried to amend his assumption.

“Sorry, I just- the way you two bicker, you’re kind of like an old married couple, I thought…”

“Ugh, gag me. No, Gai’s like my sister, not like… that,” he gagged again, but was laughing, and Cole relaxed a little. “She’s like the older, controlling, bossy, bitchy sister I never wanted.” He said with another, louder laugh, making Gaia shoot him a sharp look, like she knew he was talking about her, before Tracker drew the girl out of the room entirely.

“So did you guys know each other before Skye?” Lights seemed pretty open; he might be able to get something more than vague details from him.

The blonde nodded, raking a hand through his hair. “Yeah. We grew up down the street from each other. Her little sister was in my year, and we crossed over in schools sometimes, she was in fourth grade when I went into first, and she would have been in eighth when I went into sixth in middle school.”

“Would’ve been?”

Light nodded again, and Cole would have let it go, assumed he was uncomfortable and nervous because of the jittery way he was moving, but the other boy seemed completely at ease save his hyperactive movement. “Yeah, she got sent away to school after fifth grade. We’d both always been like, on the border of not passing the tests to get into school, the genetic tests I mean. We both like, kind of set it off,” his expression twisted for a moment, trying to think of how to explain it, but then he grinned at Cole. “You know what I mean.”

He shook his head. “No, what do you mean you kind of set it off?” Was that even a thing? Was that something that could happen and not get you taken away?

“Seriously? You don’t- I just figured, you don’t get to be as old as you and not carted off if you set it off.” The boy shrugged. “We like, tested as partial Anomalies, in the system. It’s not a perfect system, Gai says, and since neither of our abilities are like bam in-your-face abilities, we only tested as like, forty or fifty percent Anomaly, and it was never enough to get us taken away or anything, just watched. But Gai’s parents got nervous, so they sent her to some boarding school after fifth grade.” He gave Cole an arch look. “Are you sure you never tested like that?”

Cole shook his head. “No, I always tested clean.”

Lights’ jaw dropped and his eyes lit with excitement and interest. “No way? Like, clean clean? Totally, one hundred percent?” Cole nodded and Lights let out a yelp of disbelief and delight. “That’s so awesome!”

He shrugged. “In some ways. It wasn’t perfect, people figured it was a mistake-”

“Because of your eyes.”

He paused, but nodded. “Yeah. So I was treated like an Anomaly even though I’d never showed any signs of powers.”

“Never?”

Save the eyes comment, he was enjoying how enthusiastic and easy to impress Lights was. “Never. Not until I met Rune.” The more he got to know Lights, the more he reminded Cole of another boy, much younger than the nineteen or twenty year old in front of him now.

“Hey, Cole, have you seen Lily?”

Cole looked up to see Micah, one of the middle kids of the house at twelve years old, coming into the kitchen holding a textbook, notebook and pen. “No. I think she’s got volleyball practice.” Lily did most days, along with Sophia, though Sophia was on the freshman team whereas Lily was Varsity. “She’ll be home in an hour or two. What’d you need?”

“I just wanted to ask her about some of this history stuff.”

Cole smiled, nodding. Lily was the biggest history buff in the house, though honestly Cole would prefer if she’d actually question what she learned once in a while instead of simply memorizing facts. But even that was better than Henry, who found history boring and pointless and felt no real desire to learn the mistakes of the past or why they happened. “Anything I can help with?”

Micah set his things on the kitchen island while Cole continued putting away dishes while on kitchen duty, and the younger boy hopped onto the counter to talk with his older foster brother. “I dunno. It’s just, some of this shit is crazy.”

“Hey,” Cole snapped through an indulgent smile. “With the cursing. You know I’ll be blamed for your bad mouth.”

“Sorry. Some of this stuff is seriously messed up. Like, they used to discriminate about the weirdest shi- stuff. The normal stuff duh, money, power, success, blah blah blah, but random stuff too. Gender, sexuality, race- race! Like, what the fuck- sorry! What the hell does someone’s skin have to do with what kind of worker they are? I mean, I get if dark skin or light skin isn’t your thing, but they actually refused to hire people because of it. They started wars because of it, dude. And girls got paid less. And did you know they actually had some sexualities outlawed in places?” The boy was getting into his tirade, and it was making Cole smile idly as he put things away. “Like, they told you who you could and couldn’t love. And even what flipping gender you were allowed to be!”

“That they did. Luckily we’ve improved as a species.” He chuckled.

“Ok, but my question is; why?”

Join the club. But Cole didn’t say that aloud… exactly. “I’m not really sure. The books aren’t really clear about that part of it. Mostly people in power abusing power, in my opinion. But that’s just me, don’t quote me on that.”

“So we don’t learn it later?” Cole could tell that didn’t sit well with the younger boy, but he didn’t have anything else to tell Micah.

“You’ll learn details later. World wars, individual countries’ wars-”

“That’s another thing, what’s with world wars? Like, what could possibly be so screwed up that the entire freaking world has to start attacking each other?”

“You’d be surprised what people can find to fight over.” And he probably would. Seventh graders only barely started learning the gritty details about history, and only that specific to their Regions, the replacement term of what had used to be called countries, until they were about 15. There were 12 divided Regions of the world, from the Middle Americas to the Southern Africas to the East Asias and everything in between, and each Region had its own Sectors in lieu of states and counties. He shook his head, realizing he’d fallen into thought and refocused on Micah, who was ranting about… Cole wasn’t even sure Micah knew anymore. The boy was just talking to hear his own voice. No wonder the kid was on the debate team.

“It’s just freaking ridiculous, like laughable even.”

And it was, to Micah, who’d never had to endure a time where people were discriminated against for anything other than wealth, success, or Anomaly genes. Unlike in history, where people found any reason to hate another, the governments and ruling powers of the Regions had dropped a group of people in the laps of society specifically to hate. A group of people that had a scientific reason to be hated. It wasn’t opinion, it wasn’t that they looked different or acted different, it was a scientific danger they posed. And people accepted that, and for regular citizens, it was a nice life. The collective powers were in a time of peace, people followed rules and really only worried about moving up in their own lives and of course, Anomalies. A convenient enemy, in Cole’s opinion, to pit people against to distract them from fighting their governments or each other. But it worked for the people in power, and the world at large had been at peace with itself- not including its Anomaly inhabitants- for going on three decades now.

“Cole, are you even listening to me?”

“Honestly? No. Sorry, Micah but you lost me about two subjects ago.” He laughed, and Micah, never one to be deterred easily, laughed as well.

“Whatever. Point is, people in the past were stupid. I’m gonna go do other stuff until Lil gets home.” And in a flurry of movement, Micah had hopped off the counter, scooped up his things, and was out of the kitchen before Cole had even responded, but it didn’t stop the older boy from speaking his thoughts to the empty ktichen.

“Wonder what the future’s gonna say about us.”

Lights’ laughter didn’t pull him from his thoughts, but his next words did, and it was Cole’s turn to tilt his head in confusion. “Yeah, she’s pretty scary, I can’t blame your power for popping up right then.”

“What do you mean?”

“Your power. Oh, right, you’re probably still getting used to it, but a lot of them are like, instinct driven. That’s what Tech and Maggie say anyway, but that might just be an excuse for Rune. But a lot of powers you gotta learn to control, they just pop up like instincts. So you were in trouble and your power showed up to save you, stuff like that.”

“I wasn’t in trouble though…”

Lights laughed. “Trust me, if you were with Rune, you were either in trouble, or about to be.”

He didn’t laugh with the other boy, but he smiled in an attempt to not make Lights feel bad or awkward about his joke. But their conversation had found a lull, Lights unsure why Cole wasn’t laughing with him, and Cole unsure what to say that wouldn’t come off as too defensive of the enchantress, and eventually Lights spotted the triplet and said his goodbyes to Cole and loped over to annoy them instead.

Maggie, however, was one conversation he should have stayed away from. She seemed nice, everyone seemed to love her and gravitate toward her, but Rune always got sullen and withdrawn whenever she was around the emotion manipulator, and Maggie had a tendency to go out of her way to not be around Rune, and Cole too by default. So one day he decided to talk to her about it.

He should have stayed away.

“I get that she’s been good to you, and that’s good and I’m happy for you Cole. But the same thing that lets me know I can trust you is the same thing that lets me know I can’t trust her. I don’t just manipulate emotions, I feel them too, all the time, whether or not you try to hide them. You, Charge, are kind and wary and protective and overall in a good mood most of the time, and I like that. I like you, and I don’t mind having you around. Rune isn’t like that. Rune is angry and sad and scared, and that’s about it. She fluctuates between angry and furious, and sad and distraught, and with her power, all of those are bad things because none of them are conducive to controlling an emotion-driven ability like hers. That’s why I don’t like her, and don’t trust her being here. I know you like her, but she’s a danger to everyone around her, yourself included.”

If he’d had hackles, they’d be raised, and they’d only been talking for a few minutes. Apparently it didn’t take much to get Maggie going on what she didn’t like about Rune. “I don’t get why everyone says that. As far as I’ve seen, she’s gone out of her way to not deal with any of you, and all she gets in return is dislike and distrust. You all aren’t any better than the people who look down on us for being Anomalies.”

“It’s not that simple, Charge, and you haven’t known her as long as we have. You haven’t seen the damage she could do, and has done.”

“And how many years have passed since those incidents have happened?”

“Not enough.” She said sternly. “She’s killed people, Charge. You’ve seen that yourself. I understand the need to protect the person that’s protected you, but you will not change our minds simply because she took a liking to you. She’s not a good person Charge. You are, but she’s not. She has occasional good qualities, but she isn’t a good person.”

“So why is she still here?” He wanted her to say because people change, because they took in everyone here, because they hold out hope for people, because they try not to blame people for their pasts, anything to show they had hope in each other even though the world didn’t.

“Because Tech wants to let her stay.”

He’d thought Maggie was the mother hen. The good person that took care of everyone and cared for everyone and watched out for everyone. It was like having a bucket of cold water thrown at him to realize her care was selective and conditional. “So you’re telling me that no one aside from Rune has ever killed someone before? Ever hurt someone?” It was a test question more than it was a legitimate one; Lisa and Suki had caused either directly or indirectly their fair share of deaths in their previous line of work, he doubted Tracker had a clean slate, nor Kane. And who even knew about Tech and Garet?

“No. Everyone has their stories.”

And everyone was entitled to her caring about them. Except Rune. “I think I get it.” He turned to leave, thinking himself stupid for even starting this damn conversation; it had only irritated him.

“Charge-” She tried to stop him, even went as far to reach for him, her voice softening and reminding him of Lily when she tried to soften something offensive she’d said. But he wasn’t any better than Maggie in his selectiveness, and Maggie wasn’t Lily, and he wretched his arm away from her.

“I think you were right originally. Its better we don’t get to know each other. We know each other enough for my taste, Maggie.”

She sighed a motherly sort of sigh that only irritated him further. She wanted to act like he was overreacting like some naïve kid, but she was the one in the wrong. She was willing to forgive ninety percent of the Anomalies here, but for whatever reason she chose to hold a grudge against Rune.

He stalked out into the main area and looked around, half trying to calm himself down and half imagining what terrible things all of the people surrounding him were capable of, weighing them against Rune, and while he was searching for imagined guilty people he spotted the actually dangerous girl in questions lingering in the hall of the bedroom offices, watching the others in the main area with a blank look.

He drifted over to her, and while she didn’t glance at him, her expression shifted to her usual annoyed, hiding whatever thoughts the blankness had been covering, and he knew she’d spotted him a good twenty paces before he reached her side. “Hey.”

“Hey.”

She hadn’t taken her eyes off the others, pretending not to care that he was there, but he didn’t need to be Maggie to know she wasn’t angry or scared at the moment; she was just sad. A sad girl on the outside looking in, even among the outsiders. “You want to get out of here? Go for a walk or something?”

It took her a few seconds, but eventually she nodded. “Yeah. I do.” She said, letting him reach for her gloved hand and draw her toward the stairway door. He knew they were getting strange looks even for them; even as much as they lingered around each other, touching was a rarity, mostly because of Rune and her aversion to it. Something was obviously wrong, and he wished she was the kind of person that could actually talk about what was going on in her head.

They reached the ground floor, and started in a random direction, not heading anywhere in particular, and they suffered in silence while she worked through whatever was going through her head, and he tried to figure out how to ask without getting his head bitten off.

“You’re quieter than usual.”

“Am I?” She glanced at him then back to the sidewalk in front of them, looking a little confused.

“Yeah.” Do you wanna talk about it? He tried to force the words out, but before he could, she chuckled.

“And here I thought I hid my feelings so well.” She joked, still not really looking at him. He was used to it, she was usually focused on something, be it where they were going or what she was talking about or looking at, or focused on something she didn’t want to be near. But this was different, more… human made him sound like everyone else that demonized her, but it was true. She just seemed more like a girl than a walking hurricane at the moment.

“To be fair, you usually do.” He teased. “Do you wanna talk about it?”

“No.”

“Ah, there’s the Rue I know and love.”

“Don’t joke about that.”

“About what? Love? Oh, c’mon, don’t tell me you’re one of those girls who refuses to even hear the word unless it’s accompanied by red roses and eternal promises.” He lifted an eyebrow at her; she of all people didn’t seem the type to take words so seriously.

“Just don’t, ok?”

“Fine. There’s the Rue I know and whom occasionally tolerates me. Better?”

“Much. Though occasionally may be a little generous.” She said, shooting him a teasing smile. He grinned in surprise and laughed, and she laughed with him, as though she’d been waiting for his laugh to acknowledge her joke before letting herself laugh too.

He slung an arm around her shoulders, still laughing as they idled down the sidewalk. “Well if you decide you want to talk about it, I’m all ears.”

“You’re all nosiness, you mean. Get off me you sap, this doesn’t make us friends.” She groused, twisting out from under his shoulders.

Her resistance only made him laugh again. “Oh, Rue, you talk as though you have a choice in my befriending you.”

“You’re annoying as shit, you know that?”

“I’ve been told that on occasion. Usually by you.”

“A shame you can’t take it to heart.” Her words should have stung, but the smile they were delivered with took the potential sting from them, and he smiled back at her.