As I stepped out into the common area, the lightbulbs doused me in a mind-numbing whine, their shine following me every step of the way to the couch. Like the stage of a theatre, when I moved from the radius of one into another, it seemed to match my timing. It was only when I hit the couch that I realized Accha sat there.

Long after I met her, I found Accha in this position quite often. Sometimes she was studying, and sometimes she recused herself to this place after visiting my room, for she was uncertain whether I wanted her to stay, or whether the offer to let her use one level of a two-tiered fridge was merely that—an offer.

She sat with one leg folded over the only pillow cushion, her chin notched into the dimpled fabric. I decided not to think about how many times in a week it was washed.

Softly, with a crease in her brows, she said, "Is it back?"

I supposed that was the only question that mattered, at the end of it.

Still, had she overheard? Had she wanted to overhear?

I shook my head in response. "I can sense my phone and everything, but I don't think it will be of much use." For a moment, I thought of her phone; locked for seven years. Maybe my power, too, bore the same restriction. With a gesture to Rory's room, I shifted on my feet. "Should we... I mean, do you want to... want to know?"

Amusement twinkled in her eyes. Actually, maybe amusement wasn't the right word. It was more like pride. "Nah." She waved a hand dismissively. "I'd be lying if I told you I wasn't shocked by your reaction, but it would also be a lie if I said I didn't want for Dr. Pitre to kick you out of the program. I had acquired a taste for vengeance at the time, I suppose, so right about... now, I'm marching to her office to talk to her in person."

"What?"

She nodded. "Nobody told you? It's not like I had any physical proof. She probably dismissed me as an angry ex-girlfriend, which I was."

Which meant past Michaela was there, right now. This time, there would be proof. Part of me wanted to run across campus so I catch the meeting, stand there, and listen to it unfold me from the inside out.

"You're not," I said, resting a hand on her arm. "You weren't."

"Of course, I was. Like you are. That doesn't mean we were wrong to be angry, though we were, and are, and will be, sometimes. We handled it wrong." Her eyes lifted to the door, beyond which was the evidence that she had a point there.

"It was all wrong," I admitted.

Her chin swished against the divots on the couch when she spoke. "What was wrong can be fixed. Like right now. In the future. I don't claim to know everything, or even to know everything about you, but I know that I trust you. I trust that we can work together to face all of our wrongs."

As her fingers found mine, they interlaced like braided wires. The lights buzzed louder, louder, until I was certain they were going to shatter.

Instead, Rory yelped.

Go, Accha mouthed, though I had already snapped halfway around and sprinted over. I reached the doorway at the exact instant that the flashes of light beamed through the room, filling the space with nothing but white.

I couldn't see. Distantly, my system prodded, guiding me into Rory's room, by the desk.

All of the colour led to her laptop, blinking and flashing in tempo with my sped-up breathing. I stepped forward, into the line of sight of its camera, and scowled.

The light dissipated like the snap of a finger. Fizzled on the screen were two words: Hello, Rory.

I was going to punch Gideon Parkland in the face, the next time I saw him.

Struggling to pull on my smile, I said to it, and in conjunction him, "Screw off."

From the speakers came a synthetic, pounding laugh loud enough to rattle my bones. Compression made it into a low rumble like the thud of bass. When it faded, the sound button hadn't changed from its even red, as if it had never turned on.

Rory gulped. "Should I—"

"No," I said before she could finish. Anything she touched would only serve to piss him off even further.

And I had to face the facts: right now, he was stronger than me.

I hated that I could admit that, but it was my reality. I owed it to Rory not to force her to overwork herself when I knew she couldn't beat him.

Like before, the speakers boomed. "That wasn't very nice, Rory." It was too smooth to be Parkland's; like he was using a microphone equipped with a voice changer. Plausible deniability, in case someone records it? Not that it would matter if he can delete it.

"I said screw off," I retorted and slammed the laptop shut.

His voice cut out along with the buzz of the fans, and silence lifted in the room. The previous semidarkness returned. It took a couple of seconds for the power to cut, but even though it was asleep, I doubted that was enough to sever his system's link. Somehow, in some way, he'd managed to figure out which computer belonged to me on campus.

Rory stared at me. So much for staying out of trouble.

"If I toss that out the window, will that help, or make it worse?" she asked.

"Forget throwing it out. If he's connected to that thing, it'll take two seconds for him to branch out his system and net every piece of technology using the campus Wi-Fi."

"Oh." She frowned. "If I'm the CPU, how is that even possible?"

I chewed on my lip. "Think of it like a computer worm. He probably got in through some network hole and used the LAN to find yours."

"Oh." Spinning to the window, she lifted both hands to her hair, raking through. "It's like spyware."

"Yeah. Pretty much."

"I am spyware." Another drag through her hair.

There was no good way to answer that. "Sorry. If it makes you feel any better, your CPU comes with free antivirus protection."

She looked as though she would scream. Or maybe faint. Both? Either way, in the distance, the floor creaked. Accha was probably doing laps around the couch, trying to hold herself back from bursting through the wall; the thing that heroes did when someone they cared about was in danger.

And, sure, she cared about me, but Rory, too. Even if Rory wanted to skewer her.

"So..." Seemingly finished with fiddling with her hair, Rory moved to her clothes. Which were, actually, now that I was looking, rather wrinkled. It was fair enough. Laundry was a once-a-month jig in university that took all day long and distracted from pretty much every other task. "What does he want?"

"Like it matters. He can do whatever he wants, so long as it's far, far away from me."

She unplugged the laptop, though its battery life was sturdy enough to last the whole day. Shoved it into her bag and dumped it into my hands. "Well, I don't think... I'm already getting punished by Dr. Pitre, and now I have to—what, defeat a villain? Because I've got this power, that changes me?"

"He's not..." A villain. Because that made me the hero. Not particularly wanting to have that discussion a second time, though, I thought better of it and said, "He's not someone that you fight with your hands."

"Right, then," she said, her tone clipped at the end of the words. "Since that makes all the difference in the world. You... your power, CPU, system, whatever it's called... it hasn't returned?"

"Maybe that's for the best. You staying here and keeping your system locked down for the time being. I've got my mental muscle."

She tried not to roll her eyes. I considered it half of a success that I didn't get 'uh-huh' as my answer. But that was as far as it got; Accha stepped into my line of sight.

All three of us spoke at once. Accha stuck her hands in the hair in objection, not that she could get a word in while Rory's yelling continued to drown her out. Passing her, Accha threw the curtains back and pointed.

Across from Beaumont, somebody tossed their TV screen off the balcony. With a shatter that filled the room, its light petered out, looking an awful lot like the one from my laptop.

"I kicked in the one in the common area," Accha told me in a voice that rang out as the one she donned while in her suit. Crisp, and one hundred percent serious. "It's going around campus."

"He can do that?" Rory's mouth dropped open.

In the parking lot, a voice screamed. Wheels screeched against the pavement, followed by the boom of an alarm. Rory leaned forward, her hand on her mouth.

Cars. Not enough of them had technology for me to have bothered with it. Quite frankly, it was too brazen for my liking.

Weakly, I asked Accha, "Did you get the camera, too?"

"There's a—since when?"

Well, then. He'd probably heard every conversation I'd had since I got back. So that was awesome.

Car horns lit up in unison. It was like the spread of a wildfire.

Accha dropped the curtain. Her eyes found mine, stopping on my pocket, which still held June's suit. "We've got to do something, Rory."

"How?" Rory asked, as if the comment was directed at her.

I had to admit, that would also have been my line. "We're here, and he's in Havens. I like that suit and all, but what are you going to do once you're out there?"

She steeled her expression. "What I would have done if I was fighting you. Give me the suit."

I did so. The folds were deep in the shimmery fabric but came out as soon as she held each piece up, like she was worried she'd outgrown it.

"You're not fighting me," I said. "For the record, I would never be this stupid."

As if in protest to his own idiocy, the laptop fans whirred loudly. Whatever. So scary.

"No, but I know how to fight a technopath." She turned on her heel and went to change.

I spared a glance at Rory. From her vacant stare, she wasn't paying attention to me, but to her system. No wonder I'd never been able to hide my power if I was so obvious about it. Her eyes scanned back and forth as she read whatever was on the overlay. "Class got moved online."

"Oh, useful. That'll help."

She shook her head in disbelief. Then she looked right at me. For a long second, she said nothing, and the car alarms outside began their serenade once more. Someone cried out for it to stop.

"What about you?" Rory asked. She said the words with too many stressed consonants for it to be anything other than a code.

"Me?" What did that mean?

"You know..." She made a vague gesture to below us. "Your..."

The machine.

The blood drained from my face. What was she thinking, bringing that up while Parkland could still hear us? I levelled her with my best unimpressed glare and tried to figure out what I was going to do about it. Nothing about it was technological, and Accha hadn't told him we were from the future... logically, he didn't know.

Logically. He hadn't met Michaela. I doubted he'd called her either.

"It's fine," I said, trying my best not to sound strained, or betray any other emotion about it other than neutral, and hoped Parkland was too distracted to notice that made no sense in reply to Rory's question.

Thankfully, Accha finished getting ready and nodded at the door. Her wings sprouted into tiny dots against her back. She stretched them until they were translucent, fluttering low enough to almost touch my waist. Within them, veins connecting to the delicate, rounded apex cast their own light on the floor, though they were barely visible in her shadow, like a candle with no flame. Motes of dust floated through the air as she moved, summoning objects into her orbit without even having to bat them.

She lifted her gloved hand into the air between us. "You know, I've never asked if you're afraid of heights."

"You're flying me?" I blinked. "No way. I thought you'd never do that."

"Not afraid of heights, then?"

"I didn't say that."

A smile broke across the corner of her face, like she'd guessed that already. We hurried outside; the hair on my neck prickled in response to the cameras following us.

I placed my hand in Accha's, stringing the laptop bag over my head, and she lifted me into her grip so that my cheek pressed against her chest. Her wings flapped, lifting us off the ground. There was something about my feet dangling in midair with nothing to rest on that contradicted gravity, like the world beneath us flipped upside down, and the rest of me resided in space. My ankles reached for any surface upon which to prevent them from losing all sensation.

Pinpricks invaded every muscle.

Accha held me steady as she floated into the shadow that must have been Weston's campus. She set me on the angled overhang of the roof. Wet leaves and branches rolled underneath my feet. We were probably on the third floor, though I wasn't about to look to confirm my suspicions. Inside, an empty classroom stared at our distorted reflections.

"Stand back, so the glass doesn't cut you," Accha said.

"I'll do you one better." With a grin, I passed her my laser.

Firing it on, she traced a circle. The light flickered with a stuttering breath. She drew back and kicked. The glass fell inward in a concentric circle, its edges cauterized with red light. "I could kiss you for this." She guided me through the gap. Her hands rested on my weight to boost me through.

She swung into the lecture hall, her wings folding while she steadied herself.

"You can make good on that later," I said. "Now what?"

"Get all of the computers on. Let's find out what this technopath wants."