Anthem catches me in the Veins one morning, before my brother is awake, and admittedly I'm glad to see her for once.

Her gold, piercing eyes watch mine, like a predator scanning its prey for weakness, and she asks, "Is something the matter?" Her tone is unsettling, the emphasis on the wrong parts of the word so that she sounds cold and probing instead of concerned.

"Not particularly. Next mission's tomorrow?" I ask with a casual shrug.

"Yes." her eyes slide over me, "But you knew that, already."

"I came to ask about my powers. I'm not pulling my weight in battle."

"No, you really aren't." Anthem sighs. "You spend more time watching your teammates than fighting with them, you're klutzy when you do fight, and your lack of confidence and ability cripples the team as a whole, nearly as badly as Serena's does. It's a let down to me, personally- you must understand, I had expectations for you."

"Then give me something to work with." I insist.

"I want you to close your eyes." Anthem says.

I do. "This isn't the part where you tell me 'the power is in me' or something, right? Because that would be lame. Incredibly lame."

I can feel Anthem's disappointment as if I was experiencing it myself, but she replies anyways, "Reach past yourself. You are looking for traces of light beyond your closed eyes."

I shut my eyes tighter, but nothing is immediately obvious. I think I can see a faint freckling towards the edge of my vision, not that that's unusual- kind of like an afterimage. However, when I raise my hand, I notice that the purple flecking rises with it. "I think I see me." I say.

"Yes. That's Diosite. You should be able to sense its rivalling shard as well, the one with the opposite charge to what we possess- what we are seeking, together."

I open my eyes. "Do I get anything else?"

"No. It's merely an extension of your natural abilities that I've alerted you to."

It's so useless. I feel some emotion- not quite anger, but maybe disappointment- burning in my throat, but I manage to choke out, "Thank you."

Anthem doesn't have to say anything. Her shrewd, intense disappointment is more than enough.

Fine. Guess we'll do this the hard way. "But I can't redraw, either. There's no magic power scrambler."

"Adam, have you changed since this began?" Anthem asks.

"Not substantially," I admit.

"Then your powers aren't going to change."

I bite my lip. "One more thing. If I was to resign- not that I would- could you give my powers to someone more qualified?"

I expect more silence from her, some kind of contempt, but she answers immediately. "No. If there had been better candidates, I wouldn't have chosen you. But more importantly? You don't want to."

***

"Looks like a dead end to me, unless any of you can fit into vents." I tell the group. It's the sixth dead end we've stumbled onto in these hallways.

Harper steps forwards.

"Yeah, if anyone could fit, she could." Evan laughs.

Harper shoots him a furious look before turning to me. "Chief. Can you get down on your knees and burn that grate off?"

I unsheathe my blade and begin cutting a hole in the vent, which is at around ankle level. They're one of the few features of the place that so much as resembles a normal hallway. The eerily perfect coat of white paint and lack of doors or segments makes the rest of it almost alien, but aliens wouldn't need good old human ventilation systems. The grate falls off, taking some wall with it. "What's the plan?"

Harper closes her eyes and extends one hand towards the ground. The edges of her indigo cloak fly up around her, revealing the black, silky fabric underneath, and a shadow emerges from the earth, teeming with eyes.

"I didn't think that could get any creepier, but there you have it." Evan says.

"You can cut it with the commentary." Harper suggests.

"Psh. First our blond-haired, short tempered friend, now you..." Evan says. "Good thing she's not here." His voice echoes down the hallway, towards Megan, who's holding off several robots for us while we try to work this out. Luckily, Megan is too busy doing her job, unlike some people I could name, to care much.

Harper casts her shadow into the vent, eyes still closed and face tense with concentration. "I see a room," she tells us. "Shapes... definitely shapes in this one."

"Like people."

"Yes." she says. There's a darker edge to her voice, like the shadow is speaking through her. Admittedly? It's a little creepy. "But it's far from here."

Before us, the white wall opens onto another warehouse, the third one we've managed to recognize thus far. We're around back, at the other side of the plant altogether.

"What did you do?" I ask.

Harper smiles, "Hit a few buttons. Siren, let's run!"

Megan floods the corridor and we dash out, the water at our feet. The door leads out into another one of the large, warehouse-esque rooms. This time, we're on the second deck, one from which there are no ground access.

Today, for the first time, we run along one of the overhead paths. They're slim, dangerous for fighting, and held up precariously by little more than a few beams.

It's progress.

"Are we getting any closer?" Evan asks.

I focus in on the Diosite, trying to use Anthem's (incredibly ineffective) gift to me, and as she promised, I can see a single light past our own dull forms, shining like the sun. It might as well be in the sky, for how far away it is. "Nope, we're pretty much winding around in circles around the outside."

"Incredible." Evan mutters, then adds, "Walker on your left."

Megan turns, fast as a striking snake, and lifts the Walker, as we've decided to call the four-legged doglike robots, straight up into the air in a bubble of water. The metal contracts as she clenches her fist, and then she throws the bubble and the robot inside it to the ground.

Its buddies don't come after us. The hands (also now known as the "Handymen", because Megan is the worst at puns) don't seem too happy about the gap.

"Nice. Not bad for a day's work." Evan whistles, watching the twitching robot on the ground.

Harper adds, "We've never been this far, either. We have to be getting somewhere."

I shake my head. "Or they could have devised a loop, so that we run around in circles about the exterior indefinitely. The opening doors, the four warehouses on the perimeter... let's face it guys, they have us trapped here. We don't know how to get any further in than this."

"Still no humans, either." Harper sighs. "Unfortunate."

"I'm not so sure of that." Megan, who is on the other side of the bar, near a doorway, picks up a paper and flips it over. "It's a flier. Not terribly clandestine, admittedly, and definitely not necessary if all you're commanding are robots." She pauses. "This is awful."

"They're planning to eradicate life as we know it?" Evan asks.

"No, the Sanguine Delegation has aligned themselves with my mortal enemy... Comic Sans."

"You're kidding." Evan says, running across like we're not suspended several dozen feet off the ground. "Give it here."

"What's wrong with Comic Sans?" I ask, and they both give me the death glare.

"Looks like it's for some kind of meeting... on Halloween? Really? Could you get any more obvious?"

"Umbra. Do you think you could get some more intel from the vents? Figure out what those people are doing, even if you can't see who they are?"

Harper nods, and one of her shadows pulls off the grate itself and lunges into a nearby vent. "Can do, Chief."

"Really? That's still your name, isn't it?" Evan laughs.

"Who, me?" I ask.

"Yes!"

Megan adds, "I thought she was being sarcastic. Have you decided to appoint yourself leader?"

"I guess he had to, given that he sucks at battling." Evan elbows me in the ribs.

"Try me and my thousand degree knife any day, Onyx. I'll make you eat your words."I warn him. "Anyways, once Umbra has the intel, we're getting out of here."

"Alright, but let me try something first." Evan cracks his knuckles, and with one finger, he blazes an alpha symbol onto one of the walls. He steps back to admire his work. "Just an idea I had. What do you think?"

"What are you doing? Adding vandalism to property destruction on our list of crimes?"

"That's us," Evan says, admiring his handiwork. "Team Alpha."

***

Halloween goes onto all of our calendars the next day.

"I have this neighborhood thing," Megan says as we walk away from the plant one day. "I've never missed it before. I'm going to need an alibi. Do you think I could pass off as sick?"

There's so much guilt in her voice as she says it. Half of me feels desperately lonely as she does thinking about it, in part because I've never had anywhere worth going, and the other half, the half wearing the costume, is waiting for her to get over it in the name of responsibility.

Usually, leader Adam, Chief, whatever, that part of me is right, but I'm not acting on that this time.

"My dad won't care." Evan shrugs. "Plus, we need you, M- I mean Siren. Same reason we need this jerk over here." He tries to elbow me, but I catch his arm in midair. He gives me a sultry look. "Let's face it. We're important."

"Umbra's got more firepower than me." I say, and as we walk through the portal home to greet an increasingly anxious Anthem, I continue, "Serena's power would be better, if she had it under control."

"Which she doesn't." Evan adds. "Which she won't, because she doesn't show up."

"She agreed to Halloween, even though she had multiple obligations because she has friends, unlike the two of us." I argue.

"Adam's got a point. What's important is that we finally make a move on the Delegation. Whoever and whatever they are." Megan says, looking ominously towards the closing portal. Her hair blows softly in one last breath of air from the outside world, and the portal blinks out of existence.

"True. I know they're watching us- doesn't matter what they're doing, I just know they're there. Right around the corner, I can feel it." Evan insists. "Someone's planning these attacks. Learning our strategies. Playing us like an incredibly attractive five stringed-violin."

"We know, but there's walls everywhere." I argue.

"So let's start burning them down!" Evan lights an entire hand ablaze, a new trick of his. I swear, by the end of this, he's going to spontaneously combust.

Megan slumps into a chair, Evan extinguishes his hand, and the moment is gone. Even Anthem, who knows from the expressions on our faces that we've failed for the... at least sixth time, slinks away like a scorned cat, bored with us.

"Next time?" Evan asks.

"Next time." Megan agrees.

I get home late. Usually I plan it for nights my parents will be out and come in long after the sun has gone down, like this time. It's weird to think there's already a usually, but there is, a perfect groove, and we run through the center of it. I swing my backpack around, landing it on the couch, and sit down to begin my homework.

"Where were you?" Will asks, coming down the stairs with that wide-eyed, clueless expression. I almost feel bad.

"I was out with friends." I shrug.

Will raises an eyebrow. "At nine-thirty on a school night, without telling Mom or Dad?"

I get to my feet, grabbing the edge of the couch. "Yeah, Will, I'm a bad boy now. What are you going to do about it?"

"Cool your jets," Will responds. "Look, I was just wondering. They don't care, I don't care, it's not a problem." He has his fists clenched like it's a problem. His voice shakes like it's a problem.

I shrug. "Whatever you say."

"We should hang out sometime. You know, as a big group." Will suggests. "I dunno, since you're friends with Megan, and I'm friends with Amanda... maybe you could come to some Naval Brigade meetings?"

"I dunno." I get out my laptop.

Will sits down next to me, and I try my best not to fidget.

"What do you even talk about?"

I shrug again.

"Are you making out with her or something?"

Megan Briggs and I. Making out.

Oh, good lord, I wish.

I immediately regret even thinking about it.

***

We go over to Evan's house one day after school when we had nothing planned, thus marking one of the first times this year I've been honest with my brother and parents about what I'm doing after school.

His house is in an apartment, about three rooms large, but it's well furnished. It smells kind of like spice, masking the scent vacant houses tend to have, the one that smells like longing and new furniture and plaster. I sit down on his couch with a storebought cookie, making myself at home, and he sits down right between Megan and I.

Megan is looking at her phone. She's missing a Naval Brigade meeting.

"I thought, given certain issues, that now might be a good time to have a quick council. You know, just to make sure we're all on the same page." Evan suggests. "Plus, it's nice to hang out... outside of it. You know?"

"Yeah, I've got you." Megan says with a smile, but her eyes are sad. "We should put the Diosite somewhere. You know, for privacy."

Evan rolls his eyes, but all of us place our stones in a cup in the other room. It definitely feels more secure, if it's only a minute protection- like taping the camera on your laptop. It does enough.

"Please don't tell me you didn't bring us here to rail on Serena." I say, taking my seat again.

"Not everything has to be about Serena, Adam." scoffs Evan, like he's not the one who brings her up constantly so he can rail off every minute thing she's ever done to annoy him. "We need a definitive way to get this over with. For all we know they could be restocking whatever we're fighting every time we leave..."

"They probably are." I suggest.

"But the people could be worse. Do we even know what their motives are? What they're after?"

"Probably nothing good. Anthem said that the Diosite corrupts human psychology." Megan says.

"Good point." Evan says.

The conversation dies in the air. I'm not creative to think of what it could be doing to them, Evan has no way to corral us into the next point of order, and none of us want to think about what's actually going down a week from now, on Halloween.

"Do you think it affects us?" Megan asks, her tone hushed and more than a little frightened.

"We're only using a shard under moderation from Anthem. It's different." I say.

"Yeah, like drinking twice at a party is a different level of 'addiction' from injecting heroin twice daily. Basically not even the same thing." Evan adds rapidly.

"Same neurons firing in the brain though," Megan says, her voice hushed. "And who says we're just drinking twice at a party?"

"Have you been feeling different?" Evan asks.

"No." I say. "Not really."

"I... I feel good." Megan says. "When I'm with you two. When we're fighting."

"That doesn't have to be the Diosite." Evan insists, and I can feel the desperation in all three of us, like a hunger at the pit of our stomachs. It shines more intensely than the light behind my closed eyes.

"I don't know." I say. "Next order of business?"

"Yep."

"Please."

We don't get much done.