Winter break offers plenty of free time for those of us with no vacation, no life, and nothing but the tug of the Veins to guide our days. I can't count the number of half-assed excuses I've come up with to get out of the house, and sometimes I leave a note and run for it. I just need to see them again. The rest of my life, subdued family matters and half-memorized school work, feels like a long, tedious dream.

I slip into my outfit as I pass into the Veins. There's a high whine in the backroom, metal on claws, and I smile. I'm not alone this morning.

I lean on the doorframe near our 'training area', where Evan is taking down dozens of masked silhouettes of people. He moves with inhuman grace, wicked with his claws, and a well-aimed blast of fire sends anything he can't tackle to its knees. He pauses when he looks up, grinning, and one of his assailants punches him in the face. He blocks it in midair, still smiling.

"You're here early." I say. "Mission's not for another fifteen minutes."

"I've been here a lot longer than fifteen minutes. Didn't have anywhere else to be." Evan shrugs. "I think I'm done beating the crap out of dummies." He raises a hand, and all of them shatter. He jumps towards the edge of the arena, towards the viewing area, and hoists himself over the bar. He almost falls on top of me, and manages to swerve so that he falls into the seat next to mine.

"So." I say. "What's on your mind?"

Evan smirks. "What do you think I'm thinking about? What's been on your mind for the last week?"

"Dumb question," I say. "How's her jacket?"

"Warm and safe, dependable, and it smells like rain and well-lived in houses." he says. "Speaking of dumb questions, can I steal some clothes off of you sometime?"

"I don't know if you want anything of mine. I wear t-shirts when I can't be bothered to care and buttoned, collared shirts when I can, which I'm already getting the impression you hate."

"How do you breathe?" Evan places one hand close to his throat and makes a choking noise.

"How do you dress up for formal occasions?"

"Me? Formal? One of those t-shirts with a tux pattern. That way everyone knows I'm tacky and broke. Keeps people at a safe distance." he laughs, which trails off into a sigh. "I'll trade you a t-shirt sometime. To give you a fair warning, everything in my wardrobe is black. I'm guessing that's not your color."

"One week into whatever this is, and we're already sharing clothes."

"Ask me if that's before or after first base, and I will tackle you into the ground."

"I don't know. I might be okay with that."

"Shut up." He slams one hand into my shoulder.

"You boys having a good morning?" Megan asks.

"It's better now." Evan says, and I elbow him in the ribs. He coughs and bursts out laughing. Behind Megan, Serena is waiting in the main room. Harper hasn't been able to leave her house, nor find portals, but it's not like we have two weeks to throw away.

"We should go." Megan suggests.

Evan waves her off. "What, do we have to get right to it? I bet the dad cult's on vacation."

---

Apparently the dad cult is not on vacation.

We run into three members walking the halls, all in separate corners of what we've now dubbed the 'outer layer'. The first we take out, no problem, but we don't have time to stick around and interrogate him. If we're not fleeing from robots, it's the building itself, which is not to happy to see us. We free three technicians from their masks in spite of this, the last of whom runs for it before he has the chance to tell us anything.

Evan clenches a Diosite shard in his fist and blasts doors with his other hand as we run through the outer corridors, fleeing through closing doors and blowing cameras into shrapnel. It's as high-octane as we've ever been, and they can't seem to get a hold of us. Megan manages to break a window between rooms in one of the long, white corridors, and we enter a small room affixed with screens and some kind of control panel on the other side. Another masked human, in the same pretentious robes, puts his hands up. "Mercy." he says, through an awful synthesized voice. His mask is more ornate, the red streaks curled into almost alien patterns. "Spare me, and we will allow you to escape alive, given that you drop your shards at once."

The team looks to me, and I raise my sword. Evan snaps and his fingers flicker with fire. He and Megan are beautiful and terrifying as they get to work in tandem, and I hang back with the others. The man dodges a blast of fire I hope was intended to miss, although as he jolts to the right the fire hits the panel on the opposing wall instead, causing the circuitry to explode into a brilliant blaze of crimson and crackling wires. Evan shoots another blast of fire from his finger, which he's holding like a gun, and Ser's pole hits him on the side of the head, causing him to miss.

"What the fuck?" Evan asks, turning around.

"You're going to kill him! What's wrong with you?" Serena yells.

"Guys?" Megan says over the calamity.

A door opens from the glass and the man ducks in as the glass turns around. I hear the muffled sound of clicking coming from behind. When I slam my sword into the material it slices through, but it appears to be a massive, thick cube we have no hope of cutting through.

"Damnit." I mutter. "Looks like that's a dead end. Megan, is the escape route clear?"

Megan gives me a thumbs up as she looks back outside. "Not for long, though. I see three walkers, one of the snakes with the microphone heads-"

"Do we have a cool name for them yet?" Evan asks.

"No, but I'm open to suggestions." I say, staring at the wall. "Damnit."

Serena stares, distraught, at the wall where the control panel lay. Electricity still crackles from the fried hardware, and the acrid scent of burning electronics promises a potential explosion. "This could have been useful if you hadn't fried it." Serena says. "We were almost in the system and everything."

"He could have gotten away. Not seeing you be much help, Gen." Evan almost spits her name.

"If you hadn't tipped the alarms earlier by recklessly attacking people, we could have worked on hacking the mainframe or using our existing shard of Diosite to access it." Serena says, throwing her hands out.

"In case you haven't realized this, getting those shards is our main objective. We should be freeing as many people as we can."

"If we can't get into the main rooms before they create that machine that doesn't need these, we'll be fighting a losing battle. We don't have much time, which you would know if you'd been paying attention." Serena steps back from the machine, ash-touched braid swinging out behind her.

"Why do you think I'm an idiot?" Evan snipes back.
"I don't think you're an idiot. I think you're a reckless ass who uses this as some escapist fantasy instead of treating it like a matter of life and death, and you know what? Someday, that's going to get us killed."

Evan steps back like he's been punched. His teeth are grit tight, like he might break down crying or punch her in the face. Behind them, there's a high beeping noise and the whirring of circuits before the scent rises from annoying to unbearable and smoke floods the room. We run back out into the white hallways, fresher air flooding my lungs, but I can see smoke curling up through the vents. The alarms are going off again and Evan punches a walker straight through the jaw. The teeth, which are bent, rip his costume and I catch dark blood underneath. Serena wheels past him with a specialized axe, one of her more detailed creations, which bludgeons the thing to death. Evan and her are practically shoving each other out of the way at this point, and Megan looks at me like I'm supposed to know what to do about this.

"We're retreating," I say. "Three shards is a huge haul. We've done enough."
Lucily, the door is nearby, and we're back in the Veins before we know it. The last few hours are a blur of adrenaline and accomplishment, and Anthem nods respectfully to us as Evan unveils the three shards in his unharmed hand. He clutches the other arm as he puts them down, trying to stop the bloodflow.

"Not bad. I can't see you continuing on in this manner, though. Getting all fourty-seven like this would take forever. We do not have forever," Anthem says, with a sharp glance in my direction. "We have two months, three at best."

"Could have had four today, brought it up to five, but Ser wasn't feeling it."

"It wasn't my fault." Serena mutters, looking ruefully at Evan. "If you stopped being hardheaded for ten seconds-"

"There are better ways to solve this than in-fighting." Megan yells, rushing in between them. "Serena, calm down."

"I don't need to calm down!" Serena stamps her foot against the ground. "You guys are being so unfair. What the hell is up with you three? Why do you think you can boss Harper and I around, anyways?"

"Don't drag Harper into this. She does her job." Evan growls.

Serena recoils, peeling the mask from her face. Her face looks softer without it, more human, and I can see all the fear and pain we've all been hiding from in the creases of her eyebrows. "So do I." She turns and leaves.

Evan storms out after her. I'm left with Megan, who looks wistfully towards the exit. "Serena needs to go easy on him. He's angry, sure, but it's not all his fault."

"She's right, you know." I say. "We can do whatever we want on this team. We need to be responsible about this. For now, we might need to do a few missions separately, consult her about strategy... we'll be back in school in a few days. I'll see if I can talk to her sometime, face to face."

Megan nods, then gives me a tight hug. I feel myself light up from within. I hold her back, and she looks up into my eyes, her face shining with hope. "We've got this."

I think of the new machine being built in the heart of the power plant, the one that will likely destroy whatever progress we've made, and I can't help but shudder. What kind of superheroes would we be if we're destroyed by our own group dynamics before the villains can even get to us? "I hope you're right."