"I hate you." Finn's foot is stuck in the Coke machine. His jaw is ground so tightly you can make out the veins bulging against his throat. Soda fizzles from a broken can lodged at the base of the machine and drips into a brown, fizzing puddle on the floor. "I hate you all!" He kicks the machine again, and his glasses hit the floor.

Chip runs his hair through his hands. "Do you need help?"

"Not from you." Finn presses both hands against the machine's glowing skin. "Kai, get me out of this death trap, huh?"

"How did you...?"

"I kicked it, genius!" And then he slams his fists into the machine, once, twice. And then in a relentless staccato of pounding and clanging. There's a crunch and both watching boys wince. 

When Finn finally stills, Chip glances over his shoulder for witnesses, not a fan of the whole 'getting arrested' possibility. A man whose sleeves are rolled to his elbows peeks into the alcove, swallows dryly, and folds his dollar bill back into his pocket.  Chip moves against the doorframe, angled to hide as much of the alcove as his body can.

"That's unfair. I'm sorry." Finn wipes sweat from his brow, shoulders trembling. "But please help me."

Kai untangles Finn from the machine with a few tugs. Finn is thrown sprawling across the floor, his glasses flung from his face. Chip picks them up, the lenses sticky with spilled Coke, and offers them to the cussing Finn. Finn snatches them out of his hands. "What do you want?"

"Why do you hate me?" Chip's hands fly in front of his face, an edge creeping into his voice he didn't intend but doesn't bother to hide. He knows Finn's best friend is dying. He knows that he's hurting, but he can't help asking. "What did I ever do to you?"

"Besides not telling anyone about Max until he took Percy and Monet?" Finn glares, wiping his glasses with his shirt collar. "We almost died, and you could've stopped it."

"Finn!" Kai shouts, rushing to take Chip's hand. Chip doesn't react, stiff and openmouthed. It takes him a moment to remember he can shut it. "You don't know what he's been through!"

Finn raises an eyebrow he sets his glasses back on his nose. He sweeps a loose curl out of his eyes, revealing the thin chain of bruises near his hairline. "What did you go through, Chip? That you let this happen?"

Chip can't breathe. He's thought about this before, but he didn't know this is how Finn felt, too. He stands there, his hands shaking while he winds them tighter and tighter into the hem of his shirt. And then he snaps. "It's not my fault Masquerade—"

"Max," Finn says, arms crossed. His eyes are bloodshot behind his glasses, and he's still shaking. Kai glares up at him, standing on his tiptoes.

"Stop it," Kai says quietly, dropping Chip's hands.  Dried mascara flakes off on his fingertips when he rubs his eyes. "Just stop it."

"It's not my fault!" Chip undoes his sleeve cuffs and yanks them up his arm. His bruises have faded, but they're still clear, yellow and green splotches in perfect ovals near the wrists, larger up the forearm. He can still feel Max's fingertips pressed into his skin. He can still remember how much Max said he hated him, how the next day Max would run a hand through Chip's hair and tell him that he was the only thing left in the world keeping Max sane. "I didn't deserve...I couldn't stop him...you have no right to..." He stops. He couldn't stop Max, the supervillain. And the thought makes him feel so helpless and so angry, that he withdraws back into his only comfortable place: silence. Finn's eyes widen and he scratches the back of his neck, blinking down at the sticky soda residue on the floor as if seeing it for the first time.

"Oh, hey." His voice is scratchy and quiet. "That was a shitty thing to say. I'm sorry. I don't hate you. I really don't."

Chip says nothing, remembering. Remember what it felt like to be thrown across a room and land on his elbows and knees, the cries of pain he had to swallow.  Max's hand on his chest, as the calm, smiling demeanor melted into something so angry. Max hates him. Percy's dad hates him.  And Finn hates him. Chip's breath is coming in faster and faster spirals.

"Finn's just a little gruff," Kai says, resting a hand on Chip's elbow.

"Yeah, yeah." Finn glances down at his own shaky hands. "Sorry. Shouldn't have taken that out on you. You just acted like a-a normal person." Both hands held up. His eyes wide and a little bleary, ringed red.

Chip didn't realize he'd been squeezing his shut until this moment they flutter open and he finds he's hugging himself with his back pressed to the alcove wall. Coke has lapped up on his shoes, still fizzing. He still aches like he's been punched, and his hands are clutching at his heart. He lets them go, and he stills. 

"I couldn't stop Max.  But it's not just because—" Chip has said too much. The words linger awkwardly, both boys silent and staring. Footsteps scurry outside the hall, and Finn cringes against the vending machine he dented. No one wants to be the person who broke the hospital Coke machine. Mainly because being that person entails paying the hospital back for it. Finn tosses his hoodie to the ground in an attempt to soak up the mess, and as he cusses under his breath, Chip tries to capitalize on the uncomfortable conversation.

"We can stop him now."

Kai rubs his eyes again, curling strands of hair around his fingertips. He smiles, a strained gesture, while Finn stops kicking his hoodie across the floor.

"What?"

"I need your car."

Finn issues a short, barking laugh that only lasts a second. Kai is glaring at him, and Finn refuses to look at Chip. Just stares into Kai's face, his jaw tightening.

"You mean that? After Kai's car got crushed?"

Kai winces.

"The bus doesn't go to Starlight City."

"Yeah, because it's far. Why do you need to go to Starlight City?"

"Max is there."

Finn finally looks at Chip. He leaves his hoodie on the floor and leans against the machine and after several moments of silence, he slides down to the floor in his own fizzing puddle. "The police?"

"They don't know him as well as I do." Chip's thumb traces the scar left on the inside of his rib reflexively. "And they didn't stop him last time. "

"Damn it." Finn's breath leaves him in quick pants. His shaking hands curl into fists. He lifts them to the buzzing light, staring at his knuckles, which have begun to swell and bruise. He opens them as slams his fist into the machine. "Damn it!"

Kai drops to his knees beside his friend. "Finn—"

Finn waves his hand over his shoulder. "I need a minute."

"You should listen to him."

"I really need a minute," Finn says. He's gone limp against the floor and the machine, head rolled back and his eyes droop shut. If you saw him for only a moment, a snapshot, a quick glance, you'd think he was at peace. His mouth even curves upward; only a close look would reveal it pressed into a grimace. "Just...can you go away?"

Kai's hand lingers on Finn's shoulder, but Chip is able to draw him away with a nudge and a shake of his head. Finn is harsh on the outside, Chip figures, but he can forgive him for that. He can forgive Finn for hating him. He can even forgive all the cutting things he's said, because Finn and Chip are made from the same blueprints. Same quiet, same sensitivity. Chip would want to be alone, now. And so he strides out of the alcove, and after a moment of standing over Finn, Kai scurries after him into the white hall. Chip only shoves his hands deeper into his pockets, his head ducked as the boy runs to catch up.

"What are you going to do if he doesn't let you borrow his car?"

"Hitchhike." Chip slings his backpack over his opposite shoulder, the weight of it already forming in a searing stripe under his sleeve.

"Sounds dangerous."

Chip shrugs as he strides into the waiting room. Avery Jackson is still perched in his chair, but he has a book in his hands. A pulp-style romance, telling by the glimpses of cover Chip catches, all bare skin and rippling muscles, but the man isn't reading it. He's writing in it. With a cheap plastic pen that has the hospital name etched on the side. Tearing out pages, crumpling them, and making paper piles on his lap. He doesn't even look up when Chip and Kai pass him.

"So, I'll go with you."

They've crossed through the sliding doors and Chip finally turns back to him. "You don't have to..."

"It'll be an adventure." Kai runs a hand through his hair, mussing it so the strands stand straight up. "Monet would've liked that."

"You'll get hurt." He thinks of Max and shudders. He doesn't want that for Kai.

Kai shrugs. "Only if you do."

Chip is tired. He's so tired he can already feel his eyes shutting and doesn't argue with him. He just slumps against the wall and shifts his backpack to the original shoulder. It sags against him, all weight, he slumps his shoulders back. It would be nice to have a companion, Chip thinks. He doesn't want to lone this. But Max is his obsession, and like that Captain Whatshisface from Moby Dick, it'll be the downfall of his crew—his friends. If he can even call Kai and Finn his friends. Chip glances over Kai's head, bands of pink and sherbet glittering against a fading blue sky. "What about Monet?"

"She'd want Max in prison." Kai leans his weight on his heels, shrugging his arms over his chest. "So, if you go, I go."

Chip doesn't know what to say that. So he doesn't say anything. 

The doors zip open behind them. Neither boy glances back, Chip with his hands in his pockets and Kai finally buttoning his blazer. Kai's starting to talk again, slower and softer than usual, mostly about their plans and Starlight as a city. "Big and strange. I used to think I'd like living in a place like that." Kai glances at his hands."Not sure I know what I want"

"Fine!" shouts Finn. "Fine! You got me. You win!"

Chip turns back, and there Finn is, panting, his eyes wild behind his foggy glasses. So wild he can only see the whites of them.

"We're going to Starlight City," Finn says, his voice softer now. "But I drive."