I allow myself five minutes in the bathroom before dragging myself back to the heroes. While five minutes is not a lot, it's enough to shake the chill out of my fingers and ease the tight grip my heart has on my lungs. I can do this. I can get out of here without messing up. I just have to keep a lid on it until I am alone.

Shaky amusement slides through my teeth and onto my lips, wavering like a climber's grip about to slip. Nothing like no pressure.

As I approach the heroes, their conversation abruptly cuts off and Aben waves away one of three holograms hovering over his holowatch. David smiles at me and waves me to a seat.

I pause, eyeing them as I stiffly sit. What were they talking about that they didn't want me to hear? Do they suspect me? A hand squeezes my throat and I struggle to take a steadying breath. They can't already. I haven't done anything. Except lie about everything important, a thought in the back corner of my mind hisses.

David clears his throat, leaning his elbows on his knees and pointedly not looking at Aben. "That aside, So far we've established that Blank Slate has something to do with you and knows your location. In this case, there are two options: go to a safe house or implement security measures."

They're thinking of making me move? They can do that? My stomach turns into a cold lump of steel, heavy and burning, while the rest of me leaps around in a chaotic mess of alarm. There must be some things of Blank Slate's hiding in there, like clues or possible memorabilia that'll trigger a memory or something. I can't uproot and leave it behind for the heroes' pickings.

I shake my head as calmly as possible, curling my fingers into tight fists inside my pockets. "I don't want to move." Please don't make me do this because then I'll—I'll have to run away or hide or something.

Aben scowls and cuts the air in front of him with a sharp gesture. "Your location is compromised. Blank Slate knows where it is and he could come back any time and get through any defense with his power. In a safe house, he doesn't know where you are and we'll be able to install layers of security that'll at the very least slow him down."

Galah nods as she spins her pink stick between her fingers. "Think of it as a vacation house. Our safe houses are pretty sweet." She grins, spreading her fingers out wide. "We use them all the time while traveling, and they're decked out with the best mattress you can imagine."

"Yeah." A smile flashes across David's face, briefly loosening the tightness around the corners of his eyes. "It's a lot like vacation. We'll accommodate all your needs and we'll tell your boss that you'll be, uh, out of service for a while. Heroes' orders."

He looks at me, seriousness falling back into place. . "Or you can opt for more security. We can set up cameras—infrared only and not invasively, of course—security fields over the doors, sensors, and check-ins for as much safety as we can provide. But as Aben said, there's still a big risk."

"A huge risk—"

David shoots Aben a glare so cold it probably was lower than zero kelvin. "But ultimately it's your choice," he says to me, not taking his eyes off Aben.

Aben's face says otherwise, but he folds his arms and leans back on the wall, eyes smoldering.

Holding back a grimace, I drop my gaze to my lap, my thoughts tumbling around like a thousand plastic balls in a washing machine. My choice. Is it really? Or if they think a safe house is better will they force me there anyway? Aben seems all for the safe house and Galah seems to be in favor, but David is pretty adamant that it's my choice.

David seems to be the leader here and, from what I vaguely remember about heroes and from my brief googling, heroes follow the chain of command pretty strictly so he could override. But would he? Is this all a front put on for the pretense of not exerting complete control?

Warily, I peek at David. He's not looking at me. Actually, none of the heroes are looking at me. Their gazes are fixed on each other, tense silence so dense with non-verbal conversation that I can almost hear it. Galah frowns, looking irritated and strained. David stares her down, lips pressed together grimly. Aben scowls at both of them, anger sharp in each line of his face.

Whether or not they can and will force me or it really is my choice and they're fighting about something else, they're stuck in indecision. The pros and cons are still fighting to be weighed. The scales are swinging as they balance out under their new weight. The final moment when they choose still hasn't come. And—this is the prime time to tip the balance in my favor. I can use this.

I swallow and raise my head, throwing words together as fast as they come. "No. I don't want to move, not with all this...mess. And—" a slap of logic hits me and I toss it in without screening it, "—Blank Slate's got everything he wants from me, right? If he wiped my memory he must have been sure he's got everything he wanted."

The moment breaks. The scales tip. And the expressions around me shift as they take in the new information.

"That's true," Galah says as she nods slowly, strands of her hair bobbing along. "But then again, we don't know that. He might have something else left with you and he has no qualms kidnapping people. If he does, there's no telling what he'll do to you." She freezes, probably realizing that's not comforting at all, and throws me a confident smile. "But we won't let that happen."

"Exactly. We're here to keep you safe. If he comes for you, we'll catch him before he even knows it." David pats my shoulder with a confident grin, all signs of strain completely gone as if it was never there.

The ghost of alarm traces a finger up my spine and smothers the twinge of relief at success in a flurry of ice pellets. Am I already caught and I don't know it? Are they stringing me along while they wait for the rest of the team they keep mentioning? Stop it, Denizen! Not helping! Pulse thundering in my ears, I try to give a watery smile back but I am not sure if it makes it to my mouth in one piece.

Aben sighs and shakes his head but starts tapping at his holowatch. "Fine, security it is. I'll write up the plan." He stands, several holowindows hovering about him, and heads back to the room he was in before.

"Make sure to forward it to Titular!" Galah calls after him. He waves a hand in acknowledgment and she turns to me, snapping her fingers. "Right. Now that's out of the way, it's my turn. You don't mind if I do a medical check? It's just the basic stuff to log your current physique and where the memory damage is and all that fancy smashy stuff."

I freeze, the bite of winter sinking its teeth so hard into my fingers I nearly flinch. Shoot, no. Oh megabytes no. Medical checks means scans and their scans may be powerful enough to see the traces of my power through the Parasite. And if they see that everything is over. It's exactly what I can't let them do!

My throat closes up and I tense, the walls—though smooth and far away—seem to loom over me, threatening to collapse. Just one scan, one prick, one slip up and everything would come crashing down. I can't let them—I can't do this, I—

"Denizen?"

Without meaning to, I am leaping to my feet despite the shakiness of my soggy bones and the world unraveling around me. "No." The word comes out unsteady and sloppy, and I scramble to put force behind the next. "No tests."

Galah's eyebrows scratch together and she tilts her head. "Why not? It's just a little scan. I want to make sure there's no dangerous damage so, you know, you won't die. It's perfectly harmless!"

Not harmless? Ha, no! If the heroes found out—and they'd surely see the enormous amounts of power zinging through my veins—they'll want answers and if they drag that out of me they'll kill me. I can't die. I can't die before I find out the truth! I can't go down at their hands like this, so soon.

I shake my head, manic laughter threatening to turn my limbs into shaky puddles. Nope. Nope. Not happening. Not happening!

"Denizen—"

The last bit of restraint left inside of me snaps, as sudden and without warning like a rubber band snapping while being pulled taut, and. I round on him, a blaze of electrically-started fire mixed with a blizzard rushing up my chest. . "I SAID NO! No tests!"

David and Galah recoil as my voice echoes around us. I swallow, throat burning, and squeeze my fingers tight and the fire's borders tighter. "Please," I start but my voice cracks and the fire shatters like glass, leaving me with sharp, smoldering embers that somehow hurt more than the flames. "Medical stuff and I never got along. I—I can't do this right now. First memory loss, then Blank Slate, and now security measures..."

Sharpness cascades from David's face and his eyebrows loosen to curved arcs over his eyes. He raises his hands, pauses, and lets them drop. "Alright," he says softly, "I'm sorry. We'll hold off."

I slump, my legs almost giving out, but somehow I find another reservoir of strength to pull on. Fragments of logic start to emerge from the embers, piecing themselves together into coherence until they are a steady flow of thought to hold on to.

"But—" Oh no, no, no. "—can you do at least a surface-level scan? Just to make sure you're not going to die on us."

"David—"

He holds up a hand. "It's just a scan; no physical touch. It won't hurt."

"David, please."

"Denizen, I need to know you're okay!" His voice lashes out in a burst, bits of unleashed heat nipping at my ears. Before the burns have time to sting, David speaks, lower this time and flat with weirdness. "I need to know you're okay."

A dull chill creeps into my chest cavity and hangs there, wet with emotions I can't identify. I stare at the strain written in the angle of his shoulders, the real, genuine distress and concern in his face, and...the fight slides off and lands at my feet like a soggy towel. "Is it just surface-level? No strong stuff like power-sensing things?"

The flicker of relief in David's eyes is almost too much to bear. "Yeah," he says. "Scanners can't do that. We'd need DNA or blood samples to identify powers."

Letting my shoulders droop and gaze land on the top of my shoes, I sigh long and hard. "Fine. Just get it over with." Clenching my fists in my pockets, I gather my remaining strength and hold it at my core by sheer force of will. I just need to hang on a little bit more. Just a little bit more.

After far too few beats of reprieve, a chime sounds and I glance up. Galah taps at a hand-sized black slate with a screen sticking out at the top. On its side sticks out a black wand which she slides out and waves over me from my head to my toes.

Once finished, she clicks the black wand back in place. The screen lights up, multiple loading windows popping in and out of existence around her hand until the data is condensed into one window hovering a few centimeters off the screen.

She scrolls through the data, lips pursed. "Yep, memories are definitely missing, though I can't tell how much; everything's a bit chaotic up there, but nothing serious. Though, 'possible side effects include: mild headaches, fatigue, disorientation, and dizzy spells.'"

"What?" Side effects? I could have side effects? Could this get any—no. I should not finish that thought if I want to make it out of this alive.

Galah waves away the window. "Possible side effects. You may not get them. But even if you do it's nothing a medical patch can't fix! I can get a few for you if you'd like."

On top of all this, I could have headaches and dizzy spells? Why in all the world did I decide blanking myself was a good idea? Suppressing a groan, I nod. "Sure." If I am going to have side effects, I want the patches to help keep me focused on the rest of this messy mystery.

"I'll get you a week's supply. You know how to use them?" I nod again—I can figure it out—and she hops out of the room, leaving me and David standing alone.

I sigh and hunch my shoulders, intestines turning themselves inside out and backwards and static fizzles in my blood, giving my hands a slight tremble I can't stop. Now that she's gone, the soft ambience of the holographic consoles, the hum of the privacy shield over the mouth of the cove, and David's and my breathing wash over me, loud against the rush of blood in my ears.

How much longer do I have to hold out? Surely the heroes will let me go home soon. It's been—I glance at my holy watch, twisting my wrist towards me so I don't have to take my hands out of my pockets—only an hour and a half? It could've been days with how tired I am. Movement catches my eye and I grace up at David through the corners of my eyes.

He runs a hand through his hair, brow creased, and blows out air through his cheeks so they puff up. "I'm sorry. We shouldn't be dumping all this on you like this. It's just—no, nevermind. No excuses. I'm sorry."

He's sorry? Genuinely sorry? I face him and study his face, hesitation rounding my movements. His gaze is fixed somewhere far away, a little frown pressing his lips together into a thin line. The corners of his eyes are frozen in the process of crumpling with the rest of his face, making him look like he's squinting a little.

Weary, is what his face speaks of. Weary and troubled and something darker that I can't pin down. Oh. He's affected by all this too, and he's wearing thin. The tight heat inside of me lapses and the crazed shakiness in my limbs mellows to a manageable level. "No, I'm sorry for...losing it. What were you going to say?"

"Do you want me to be honest?"

"Yeah."

"You sure? I don't want to overload—"

"David, I can handle it." At least, I hope I can. Maybe it's because he looks too tired to lie, or maybe it's because that darker something is almost recognizable, or maybe it's because I just...want to know what's wrong with him. I am not quite sure what reason it is, but I want to know. I really do.

David searches my face then looks past me, his gaze growing distant again.

I pivot to trace his gaze to the largest console in the holopit. Projected over its face are six symbols that I recognize as the symbols representing each member of the Storm Cell team. On the far right is a large black ant, next to it is a navy circle with a red wave passing through the middle, then a silhouetted bust with a question mark inside of it, a pink cockatoo, a citizenship card, and, in the very middle, a stylized fox twisting in midair. My breath catches, a laser slicing through my heart. That one must be Storm Cell's former leader, Vulpine.

The one that I killed.

"We lost her—Vulpine—to him. One moment she was there and then..." David's hushed voice trails off, a raw ache expanding from the end of his sentence and settling between us like an almost tangible presence. He swallows loud enough to be heard. "It scares me that I could lose another friend to Blank Slate."

Someone presses the pause button on reality. Friend. Vulpine was David's friend and leader and I murdered her. I, Blank Slate, Denizen, whatever my name is, killed her and David doesn't know. He still thinks of me as a friend, one that he is afraid of losing. And he's hurting. Megabytes, all the team must be hurting and it's my fault. I did this to them. I hurt them. I killed her.

A fist slams into my gut as reality un-pauses but I remain frozen, staring at the afterprints of the badges that appear every time I blink, shaking under the weight of invisible stains on my blank white fingers.

The rest of the time at the heroes' HQ and the trip back home is a haze of movement and sound barely felt. Time skips like a corrupted movie file, some scenes scratched and blurry while others are entirely jumped over as if they were the mere blip of a nanosecond.

At some point during one of the undamaged scenes, I find myself staring out the window at the dazzling arcs and swoops of the city buildings and the shimmer of ads dancing across their sides, listening to the engine hum along to the echoing of, "My fault" and, "I killed her," in the void of my mind.