The longest road trip Maya had ever been on was to Los Angeles to visit extended family: Colorado to California through Nevada and Utah, and back again. She'd learned then that she had absolutely no sense of direction or time, and despite her successful trip to Portland—hurray for stubborn, determined idiots—her senses were still garbage. When the car pulled into a driveway, she hadn't even realized they were in Louisiana, let alone that they were already at their destination.

The house sat alone on a road that stretched empty for miles in both directions, and behind it was a forest that Maya imagined led to a bayou. The setting sun cast the sky in a fading glow of orange-yellow, and she wished that they'd gotten here earlier. She'd learned to appreciate the clarity of daylight, and walking into a stranger's house at the brink of darkness felt like a mistake.

But, this was what she asked for. No turning back now.

The front door of the house swung open, and standing there was a woman in her sixties. She was frozen for a moment, watching her two guests silently get out of their car, and then she hurried down the porch steps, yelling at Jack.

"Boy, you know better than to be cryptic!" she hollered, referencing a phone call that must've been made when Maya was asleep. "I almost had a heart attack!"

Jack grinned. "Nice to see you, too," he said, returning the woman's hug. "Jemma, this is Maya. Maya, Jemma."

Maya waved awkwardly. "Uh, hi."

Jemma smiled; it was the type of delighted face that a grandmother would make when she had relatives to feed. In one fell swoop, she placed an arm around Maya's shoulders and gently ushered her into the house. Only a few minutes had passed between arriving in the driveway and the door shutting closed behind Jack, the last one in, but in that short time, the sun had set. It was officially night, and Maya was in a stranger's house with a stranger's arm around her shoulders, having been driven here by another stranger whose screams she heard in her head.

What a strange predicament.

Jemma took her arm off Maya and led the way into the house. "I wish you had gotten here earlier," she lamented. "I spent all day organizing, and now I'm exhausted."

"That's okay," Jack said, staring at the ceiling. "We can try tomorrow."

Try what? Maya thought. What could Jemma do to break their connection? She must be Gifted, too, and Maya concentrated on the back of her graying head, trying to sense it, to recognize someone like herself.

Jemma suddenly looked over her shoulder and winked. "Don't overexert yourself," she said softly. "Not all Gifted are made to see."

Maya immediately turned around to ask Jack what they were doing here, but he was gone. She panicked for a second, thinking that he'd abandoned her, but then she heard footsteps above. He'd simply gone upstairs.

Jemma slid open the door at the end of the short hallway, and Maya expected a closet or something, but it led to the kitchen. The wallpaper was yellow and flowery, and an ancient kettle sat steaming on the stove.

"Tea?" Jemma asked, opening the window above the sink to let in some air.

Maya shook her head, rooted in the doorway. "What kind of Gifted are you?" she asked bluntly.

"I'm a people person."

"I don't get it."

Jemma laughed and tilted her head thoughtfully. "Let's just say that I understand people. I see threads you can't even begin to imagine."

Threads. Connections. Sure, sure, that made sense: to break an unwanted connection, they'd gone to someone who was Gifted to understand them. Maya was thrilled, but she wished they could get this over with now so that she could go home as soon as possible. She knew Jemma was tired, though, and barging into her home was rude enough. It—whatever it was that they would do—could wait until tomorrow.

"There's an empty room upstairs," Jemma said. "I have some things in there, but there's a bed for you. Go freshen up and come down for dinner. Do you like lasagna?"

"I'm not hungry."

"Are you sure?"

Maya nodded, honest. She'd probably be hungry in a few hours, but she didn't want to eat now. There were snacks in her backpack for later. "I think I'll just go to sleep," she said.

Jemma shrugged. "Sweet dreams."

Maya went upstairs, noticing on the second story that the attic ladder was down. Jack must be up there. She went up two rungs and stopped, losing her nerve. Attics freaked her out. It wasn't like she had anything to ask him, anyway.

"Goodnight," she called out, scrambling back down.

She went into the room that must be the spare Jemma was talking about. It was small but cute, with a twin bed in one corner and a few bookshelves against the walls. Maya dropped her backpack onto the floor and flopped onto the bed, breathing a sigh of relief. It had been too long since she'd slept comfortably.

She sat up, yawning, and scanned the bookshelves. Jemma was a sort of scientist, judging by the framed photos of her in labs. Jack was in one of them, along with a few other, college-aged-looking people: they sat under a tent in a desert, huddled around a frog in a tank, smiling. Maya pulled out the thin book next to that photo, a research study of herpetology.

"Herpetology," she said out loud, not knowing what that was until she opened the book and saw a detailed sketch of a rare snake. She wrinkled her nose and flipped to the front to see the authors: Dr. Jemma T. Henson and her researchers, David Blake, Jack Parker, and Anita Patel.

So, he was a herpetologist before the Enhanced started trying to kill him. Interesting.

__________________

It had been two years since Jack had been to Jemma's house, but it was exactly as he'd remembered it. He'd noticed some water dripping from the ceiling when he first walked in, so he quietly went upstairs and then up to the attic to fix the leak. He couldn't tell Jemma—she'd insist that he not help, but he wanted to. It was the only bit of good he could do for her.

He was finishing patching up the leak when he heard Maya say goodnight and scamper off. He'd turned toward the attic hatch to say it back when he saw the figure standing in the moonlight and froze.

"Hello, Jeanine," he whispered.

The ghost lurched forward on shaking legs. Through the wet hair that hung in front of her face, Jack could see the one, bloodshot eye overflowing with tears, the fleshy lips trembling.

"I was innocent," she whispered, desperate and sad. "I didn't have their money."

"I know, Jeanine," Jack said softly. "I know."

"I was innocent," she repeated, choking on a sob. "And they drowned me in the tub!"

Jack closed his eyes. "I know," he repeated, caught up in the aftermath of a Vermont murder that had nothing to do with him. "I'm sorry."

When he opened his eyes, Jeanine was standing a foot away. She never came closer than this, she never tried to touch him, but this time...Jack looked down. The attic was filling with water. The hatch was closed, even though it hadn't been a moment ago, and none of the water was leaking through the floorboards and into the house. It was all miraculously contained in the attic, the level rising.

It's all in your head, he thought dryly, but it might still kill you.

Jack shut his eyes tight and focused until it went away, until he could no longer hear Jeanine's labored breathing or feel the cold creeping up his legs. It was all gone, pushed out of reality by him. Then he felt the heat growing behind his eyes, the uneasy feeling in his throat, and he started to panic. This was horrible, horrible timing. Maya was so close—if he went supernova now, and she heard it through the connection, it might hurt her this time. He couldn't keep suppressing his power until it exploded, he had to let it go.

Damn it, Jeanine, he thought, and he released his control and let the power take over.

The instant he opened his eyes, the heat behind them disappeared, replaced by the chilling realization that he was completely underwater. The level had already risen to the top. There was nowhere for him to go, so Jack just rolled his eyes and let his feet float off the floor, already struggling to think without air. Jeanine was still there; now that her hair was floating, he finally saw her entire face. She was speaking, her lips moving, but no bubbles came out of her mouth because the last of her air had left her lungs two years ago when she was killed. Was this it, then? Her goodbye show before she left him alone for good, or was she taking him with her?

His question was answered when Jeanine lunged forward, grabbing his face and forcing his mouth open. Jack bit down on her fingers as water rushed down his windpipe, and he was more annoyed by the taste of her rotted skin than the fact that he was drowning.

Please let this be fake, he thought as she jabbed her finger into his left eye, the same one she'd lost. Please let this—

Jeanine screamed, and he swore he could hear it, even as he was blacking out. All the water suddenly vanished, and Jack fell to the floor, gasping and sputtering. The floorboards were dry, as were the walls and everything else in the attic, but he was soaked to the bone. He frantically reached up to his face only to find that his left eye was perfectly fine, but the taste of rotting flesh remained in his mouth, and he almost threw up. Almost. He didn't fix that leak only to throw up and make the attic even worse.

After a minute of coughing, Jack stood up, a little dizzy. After episodes like this, he always wondered how much of it was real and how much of it was fake, though it never did make much sense. Something this bad hadn't happened in years, and it only happened now because he let it.

Damn it, Jeanine.

____________________

Jack was sitting on the top step of Jemma's small deck, his elbow on his knee and his face in his hand. He was still soaking wet, and it was freezing, but he didn't have the energy to care. Jemma came outside and sat in the deck chair, rocking back and forth a few times before clearing her throat.

"I saw on the news that a CEO's office got vandalized," she said lightly, "and they can't find a single suspect matching the description of John Flynn. Isn't that so strange?"

Jack smiled; he'd completely forgotten about that. It was fun to act out sometimes, especially when shapeshifting made it so easy. "Thank you, Jemma," he said, grateful that she'd let them come.

"Don't thank me yet." She shook her head. "Maya's asleep. We can talk now."

Jack was quiet for a moment, staring out into the forest. "She's watching us through the window," he said, without having ever looked back.

Out of the corner of his eye, he watched as Jemma looked up at a second-story window. The crack in the blinds immediately disappeared, and it didn't come back.

Jemma snorted. "Awake or asleep, she can't hear us from there. So, tell me, what's going on?"

"I don't know. That's why we're here."

"Again with being cryptic!" Jemma got up from her chair, knees cracking, but that didn't stop her from settling down on the opposite end of the top step. "If you're not going to tell me why you look like you just went swimming, at least tell me why you brought her here."

"She can hear it," Jack said quietly, rubbing his face. "I don't know how, or why, but we need you to break our connection. She needs her life back, and I need to not have a little girl tuning into my breakdowns."

Jemma leaned back, surprised. "I...Have you told her why they happen?"

Why. The damn why—it always came back to that. The truth was that Jack Parker was too powerful for his own good, so powerful that by simply walking into a room, he would know the history of every person standing in it, along with what they were thinking, what they'd eaten for breakfast, and maybe even their date of death. He would know if the building had a third-floor vending machine that was missing a button, and he'd know that the company it belonged to was going to go down .23% on the Dow Jones on September 23rd. He would see apparitions all the time, everywhere and anywhere, and that combined with the constant bombardment of unwanted knowledge would drive him insane. It almost had, before he figured out what to do.

Because Jack Parker was scared, he suppressed his power. That was how he'd been living for several years: in a constant state of suppression. He still saw some ghosts, he could still shapeshift, and he still knew some things he didn't want to know, but none of that was nearly as terrifying as what his power did in its natural state.

Chaos didn't enjoy containment, however. The pent-up energy exploded every now and then, manifesting as painful light in his eyes and a scream in his throat. That was what Maya heard, what she felt. To stop it, Jack would have to let go like he'd done in the attic, but he couldn't do that permanently. He'd go insane. The only way to help Maya was to sever the connection...and she didn't need to know the rest.

"No," he said finally. "I haven't told her, and I don't plan to."

Jemma frowned, but she didn't say anything against it. It was his secret to keep, entrusted only to her. Not even Nick knew.

Poor Nick. What was he up to these days?

"Where did you drive from?" Jemma asked.

"Portland."

"Oh! How was it? I heard they have great lobster."

Jack smiled. "The other Portland."

"Oregon, hm? I heard they have great..." She trailed off.

"I have no idea," he said, shrugging. "I didn't get to see much before Maya found me."

"How did she find you? She can't be more than—what, thirteen? How did she manage this?" Jemma was asking herself rather than Jack, since it was obvious that not a single one of them knew what was going on. "She's a bold girl."

She is, Jack thought, glancing up at the window.

Maybe that wasn't such a good thing.