Maya hit refresh on every tab. Jemma's laptop lagged but obeyed, and she quickly scanned the headlines of fifteen different news websites local to home. She hit refresh, scanned, and did it again, for the fifth time.

There were no articles about a missing girl.

It was morning. Jemma was in the kitchen, cleaning up after breakfast. Jack was upstairs, probably sleeping. Or trying to. Maya was in the living room, on her knees in front of the coffee table. Over the edge of the laptop screen, she caught glimpses of the weatherman on TV. Sunny all day, sunny all week.

Jemma slid open the kitchen door to look in. "What are you doing?"

Maya's finger twitched over the refresh button. Third time's a charm, but six was desperation. She closed the laptop. "They're not looking for me," she said quietly.

"Your parents?"

Maya swallowed. "They must be so mad."

Jemma came closer, shaking her head. "Don't think of it that way," she said gently. "The reason they haven't reported you missing or started a search is because they're afraid of drawing attention to you, not because they don't care about you."

Maya fidgeted with her fingers. Her parents knew nothing of what she'd learned only days ago, so all they could do was guess that there was someone, somewhere, who might be after their little girl for her power, whether it was a government or a demon or a cult of Gift-suckers. The fact that they were keeping silent for her protection only made her feel worse. Did they think she was dead, or did they believe the message Jack sent through the refrigerator magnets? Could she ever apologize enough for putting them through this?

Maya stood. Blood rushed back down the bottom halves of her legs, and she rubbed her knees before following Jemma into the kitchen. "Tell me about the Enhanced."

"What do you want to know?" Jemma said, picking up a glass to dry.

"Who they are, how it all started. Tell me their once upon a time."

Jemma chuckled, but there was a hesitancy behind it. It was only after silently cleaning and drying both glasses and sitting down at the kitchen table that she met Maya's eyes and sighed.

"Once upon a time," she started cautiously, "there was a man in 1892. He wanted a son, but his wife had a girl, and the wife died of complications. He tossed the baby in a burning fire pit and left."

Horrified, Maya imagined those little hands waving around in the flames, and the soft, days-old skin bubbling up in welts.

"A few days later, a traveling family comes upon the pit. It's burned out and full of ashes and scorched rocks, and to their surprise, there's a baby in the center. A healthy, living baby."

Maya remembered that the woman who tried to kill Jack had burst into flames. She kept that uncomfortable little detail in the back of her mind and kept listening.

"They took her in as their own and named her Mary Jane Calhoun. Several years later, Mary Jane is an...interesting person. She discovers that she has a special talent, a Gift, and what started as an accidental discovery turns into her personal, wicked little game."

Maya cleared her throat. "What was her Gift?"

Jemma tapped her fingers on the table thoughtfully, taking her sweet time collecting her thoughts. Or maybe she was reconsidering telling the truth. "Among other things, she discovered," she continued, "that she could take people's...being. She could drain them of it with a touch. She turned another human into a semblance of herself, shared her ability in a way so that he could do what she did, if a bit differently: where she could devour a person's soul, Gifted or not, the people she turned could only devour a Gift. And," Jemma breathed out, "that's where the cult of the Enhanced began. The trait of Enhancement is passed down through bloodlines, but outsiders can be turned. Their cult, and the concept of hunting the Gifted, all stems from the one Gifted who held the devouring talent first."

"Mary Jane," Maya whispered. A Gifted started the Enhanced. Her face twisted in disgust. "Well," she spat, "at least she's long dead."

Jemma sighed. "She's not. She's a seemingly immortal entity who roams the Earth like a ghost with a black rose in her hair. Legend calls her Death."

A black rose...

Maya froze. It was Death she saw in the rearview mirror after waking up from the dream of the mountain pass. She squirmed in her chair nervously. "How do you know all this?"

"Jack told me."

"And how does he know?"

"Death told him."

Maya blinked. "Are they...like, friends?"

"God, no," Jemma laughed. "No. She wants something from him. That part, he's never been honest about."

Maya exhaled hard through her nose. She was happy to be getting answers, but losing her ignorance came at a cost. She couldn't believe she ever thought this would be as simple as finding him, telling him to shut up, and going home.

"Do the Enhanced feel a hunger for us?" she asked.

"It's not a hunger so much as a need to do what tradition dictates. And I imagine that the feeling of power from devouring a Gifted is exhilarating."

"But will they die if they don't do it? Go crazy or get sick?"

"No. Like I said, it's not hunger."

"So they're not even murdering us for sustenance," Maya said dryly. "They're doing it for sport."

"Yes."

"What happens if someone doesn't want to do it and leaves the group?"

"The very few who do either get hunted and killed by the family they turned on, or they spend the rest of their lives looking over their shoulders."

Like Jack, Maya thought. Just on cue, he came downstairs and took the chair across from her.

"Ready, Jemma?" he asked.

Jemma raised an eyebrow. "Did you not sleep at all?"

He laughed tightly and asked through closed teeth, "Is it obvious?"

No, it wasn't, because Jack always looked tired and his voice was always hoarse, but Jemma must've known something Maya didn't, something about why the floor beneath the attic door was damp this morning and why he was soaking wet when he was sitting out on the back steps last night. She guessed it had something to do with that drowned Vermont ghost he'd shown her, but she didn't want to be sure, so she didn't ask.

Jemma was between them, and she held out her hands, palms up. Jack took one in his immediately, but Maya hesitated.

"I'm going to have a look around," Jemma explained, "and try to understand this connection."

Maya slowly reached over, her hand hovering over Jemma's. She took a deep breath, and when she dropped her hand, her eyes involuntarily closed. The gentle breeze outside the kitchen window disappeared, replaced by an eerie silence.

When her eyes were finally able to open, she was standing in a black void. There was no light source, but she looked down and saw herself, perfectly illuminated in the darkness. She took a step forward and realized that, somehow, there was a floor, and she jumped with her hands outstretched and hit no ceiling—though even if there was one, she was probably too short to reach it.

"Jemma?" she shouted, her voice echoing against invisible walls. "Jack?"

"Relax."

Maya turned around wildly. It was Jemma's voice, but she wasn't here. Maya was alone in the void.

"I'm going to send you away while I look around," said the disembodied voice from an indiscernible direction. "Just relax."

"Send me away?" Maya repeated. "What do you mean?"

Her body lurched backward, limbs flailing in front of her as if someone grabbed her by the spine and was dragging her across the universe. She slammed into something behind her, and the void blinked out of existence and became something else entirely.

Maya tried to check her surroundings, but she couldn't turn her head or even move her eyes. Her hands were fidgeting in front of her even though she wasn't intending for them to, and they were...small? Everything in her view was bigger than it should be. The coffee table she sat in front of was massive. The unlit Christmas tree in the corner—why was it there?—was freakishly tall.

A pair of legs walked by, and Maya was suddenly running after them. She felt oddly short, and as she saw more of the room, she recognized that this was home. Home as it had been in December, six years ago, according to the calendar that her gaze quickly passed over.

Maya looked up and saw who the legs belonged to. It was her mother. She smiled down at her and tapped her nose, and Maya felt it. But when she tried to speak, tried to say hello to her mom, she couldn't. Her mouth refused to do what she wanted.

And she understood, then, that Jemma had sent her into a memory. Maya was living in her younger self's recollection, and she could only see what six-year-old Maya had seen, do what six-year-old Maya had done.

Her mother was doing something on the counter. Maya was still looking up at her, and her heart swelled. She was standing so close. All she wanted was to hug her mom and apologize and tell her that she missed her so, so much, and all she could do was stare. Just stand there and stare.

"Still up, I see."

Maya turned. Her father walked into the kitchen and stood next to her mother. "Maybe we shouldn't have let her stay up," he murmured.

"I tried to put her to bed," her mother sighed. "She refused. She wants to see it."

"Well," he said, getting onto his knees to look at Maya directly. "If she's this determined, then of course she'll see it!"

He smiled and ruffled her hair. Maya could feel the comforting weight of his hand on her head. She fought against her memory, wanting to reach out for him, but her arms stayed at her sides, as they had at the time. She only giggled and ran away to the living room.

Her parents followed. One grabbed her from behind—she couldn't see who—and brought her over to the centerpiece of the night: a clock. It was 11:59 on December 31st. Her parents began counting down the seconds, and Maya's hands balled up in excitement.

When the clock struck midnight, she turned around and screamed, "Happy New Year!"

"Happy New Year!" they exclaimed back in perfect unison, leaning forward to hug her.

Maya's eyes closed as she buried her head between their shoulders, one hand caught up in her mom's hair, the other bunching up the fabric of her dad's sleeve. Her spine started to tingle; she knew she was about to be ripped away, so she memorized this feeling, the warmth of this memory that she forgot she had.

And she let go.

________________________

"Oh."

They were back at the table. Jemma let go of both their hands and rubbed her own together. "Oh," she repeated under her breath, eyebrows knit in thought.

Maya waited. This was it. All her troubles were for this revelation. "What did you learn? Do you know what the connection's for?"

Jemma tilted her head. "You two," she said slowly, "are meant to do something."

"Do what?" Jack asked.

"I don't know." Jemma frowned with disappointment. "I can't make sense of it."

Jack looked at Maya. She was still reeling from the words, trying to figure out what it meant, and he took her silence as indifference.

"It doesn't matter," he said. "Just break it."

Jemma nodded. Maya felt a sudden, sharp pain in the back of her head. There was a pressing force, something grating against her mind. The connection was about to be cut, and this was what she wanted from the start, but Jemma's words were looping over and over. Meant to do something.

We were meant to do something.

Just before the connection was cut, Maya jumped up. "I know what we're meant to do!"

Jemma lost focus, and the pressure and pain went away. Jack blinked and waited expectantly.

"We," Maya announced, "are going to destroy the Enhanced."

Jemma only blinked. Jack asked, "What?"

"We're going to get rid of the bad guys."

Jack stared at her, shaking his head. "No."

"Why not?" Maya urged.

"Why not?" he repeated incredulously. "Why—how would we do that?"

"I don't know yet, but that's something we can figure out!"

Jack rubbed his face. Jemma was equally shocked. Maya looked back and forth between them, waiting for them to come to their senses, but neither said a word.

Maya gripped the edge of the table, heart pounding. "You're not even going to try?"

"The Enhanced isn't something we can just get rid of," Jack said. "They're strangers, living who knows where, and—"

"It'll be difficult, and crazy, I know," Maya exclaimed, "but we can do it!"

Jack shook his head again. He wore an expression she hadn't seen before, a mix of fear and disappointment. He couldn't believe she was saying this, and she couldn't believe he wasn't agreeing with her.

"No, we can't," he said finally, "and we're not going to."

Maya desperately turned to Jemma for help, but she wore that same expression. It was clear she agreed with him, so Maya turned back to Jack and stood up to lean forward.

"I'm not like you," she said forcefully, but her voice was cracking. "I can't spend my life going from place to place and always having to watch my back, I have a family! I want them to be safe, and I want to be safe, and I want both of you to be safe!"

She received high-tension silence that lasted forever. Jack met her scathing stare with an equally scathing one of his own, and without breaking eye contact, he rigidly said, "Break it. You're going home today, Maya."

Jemma obliged.

Maya felt the sharp pain again, the shiver-inducing grating. "Wait!" she said, and Jemma obliged, that, too, to Jack's annoyance, and the feeling vanished again.

"Sleep on it," Maya insisted. "If, this time tomorrow, you still think there's nothing we can do to stop the Enhanced, then Jemma can break our connection, I'll go home, and we never have to see each other again."

"I'm not going to change my mind."

"Sleep on it," she said again. "Please."

Jack exhaled irritably. "Fine."

Maya was too angry to say thank you, so she dipped her head in an obnoxious little nod and ran upstairs. It was eleven in the morning. She had twenty-four hours to find a way to convince them that they could defeat the Enhanced, or else she was going to spend the rest of her life in a constant state of fear.

Maya lied back on the bed and took deep breaths, trying to calm down. Jack and Jemma were older, they'd seen much worse things than her, and it made sense for them to not want to go after the Enhanced. And who was Maya to them, to make them uproot the lives they made do with and put themselves at risk? Whatever anger she felt toward them was unjustified, even if she knew she was right. She needed to come at this a different way and make them understand that if they believed in each other and truly tried, they could find a way to get rid of the cult problem.

Jack's first question was how. He didn't say a word about wanting to do it or not wanting to do it, he only said they couldn't. Which meant that if Maya came up with a good plan, then he might warm up to the idea.

Or was she deluding herself?

What could she come up with that he hadn't already tried, or considered?

Maya rolled over onto her stomach, watching a ladybug crawl up the wall. The twenty-four hours weren't just for Jack; they were for herself, too. In this time, she could come up with a plan, or she could come to terms with everything she learned and find a way to coexist with it.

The ladybug crawled underneath the wall clock. She had twenty-three hours and thirty minutes.

_______________

A little bit before dinnertime, Maya found herself at the kitchen table. Jemma was rifling through storage and trying to organize her house, so the table was cluttered with various items, and Maya picked mindlessly at them. It had been seven hours, and she'd come up with nothing.

"Do you see a box full of forks?" Jemma called from a closet in the hallway.

Maya shuffled through the trinkets until she found it. "Yeah!" she shouted back. "They're so rusty."

"Yeah? Toss 'em in the trash for me."

Maya did as she was told and waited for her next task. Jack walked into the kitchen, raised an eyebrow at the mess, and took the chair across from her. She was afraid he was mad at her, but he said nothing. He helped organize some of the things into piles and made a face as he got dust and grime on his hands. That was why Maya was wearing gloves, and she handed the box to him, but he pushed it away.

"My hands are already dirty," he said, shrugging.

Maya nodded. They kept organizing, and she watched him, searching for signs of residual annoyance or hostility. There was none. It was as if the argument never happened. He was perfectly neutral, but he suddenly straightened when he noticed the current centerpiece of the clutter: a blue-green glass vase.

"Jemma," he said, "where'd you get this vase?"

"Which one?"

"The blue-green one," Maya answered.

"Oh." Jemma took a minute to consider. "A thrift shop in Southern California, I think. About a decade ago."

"So it's probably unique?" Jack asked, tilting his head at the vase like he remembered it from somewhere. "One of a kind? Unlikely to be mass-produced?"

"I'd sure hope so," Jemma laughed. "The shopkeeper said it was made in Venice. I paid a lot for it, and I'd say I've kept it in good condition, don't you think?"

Maya agreed. It was pretty and clean, despite having been in storage, and she liked the way the blue-green sparkled in the kitchen light. What she did not like was the way Jack was looking at it, and how his lips pressed together and how quickly he stood up.

"Jack?" Maya said carefully.

"We have to go," he whispered. He finally tore his eyes off the vase and looked at her. "Get your things. We have to go."

Jemma, still in the hallway and having not seen his distress, casually asked, "What's wrong?"

Jack went to the sink and washed his hands, his movements jerky and panicked. "We have to go, Jemma. The sooner, the be—"

He looked up from the sink and at the kitchen window, and Maya gasped when she followed his line of sight. His reflection wasn't there. Instead, staring back at him was a woman with a rose in her hair. Before he could move, Death was coming through the window like a ghost and going right through Jack and disappearing. He staggered back only one step and froze.

Maya scrambled out of her chair and backed up against the wall in fear. "Jack?" she said quietly.

He didn't answer. He stood completely still, his back to Maya, hands still in the air and dripping wet as the faucet continued to gush.