"Tonight, on Pictograph Viewport: Former treasurer of Daintree's philanthropic organization, One For All, came forward this morning with serious allegations against the company." The news ad interrupts the episode of Parallels, and without a Premium subscription, I can't skip it. Waving open the Settings tab, I largely ignore the reporter's voice as she continues. "The ex-employee, John Roberts, accuses the charity of financial fraud, falsifying records and double-billing donors in an intentional attempt to over-fund projects. Where this 'extra' money has gone is still unknown, but Roberts has expressed strong opinions on the matter. All this and more, tonight, on Pic—"

There. Muted. Take that, commercial.

To pass the time, I turn to Darien on the other armchair.

"Any theories so far?"

"A couple," he says, leaning over the armrest. "I'm thinking maybe Shadow Mask is the guy who was stalking Artemis in the flashback. Maybe he's mad that she's with Cara."

"Ooh, maybe. He definitely seemed... creepily in love with her, in the flashback episode. Oh, and Artemis is from Universe 67, where they have that celestial religion, right? It would explain—"

"Shadow Mask's heptastar amulet! I didn't even think of that!"

While considering the theory, I reach for my tea, only to discover that the mug is disappointingly empty.

"One sec, I'm just going to refill this," I tell Darien, before heading to the kitchen.

I figure I don't need a new tea bag for only one more mug, so I just refill the kettle and set the temperature. Within a few seconds, the glass is already starting to fog up, and I watch it somewhat passively while letting my mind wander.

First, it wanders leisurely around the fictional world from Parallels, raising thoughts and theories and what-ifs. Shadow Mask, Artemis, friends and love and heptastars and portals through universes circle my head like the sugar plums I read about during the Culture and Religion unit of Literature class. Then, universe-hopping spaceships morph into planes, and portals into airport security arches, and suddenly I'm not thinking about badass sci-fi heroines running through space and time, but about one real girl running away.

One real girl who's in way over her head.

The water starts to boil, crashing up against the sides of the kettle like a tumultuous sea contained in heat-safe glass. The kind of open water that would be difficult to swim in but so, so fun to ride in a sailboat, or a surfboard... or a WaterGrazer.

I glance back at the quaint living room where Darien sits casually in an armchair, one ankle resting on the other knee, a mug of tea held comfortably in his hands, the muted TH still playing its silent ads in the background.

I may be in over my head, but I'm not drowning. Not as long as I'm not alone.

"Are we catching a water-hover someplace?" I asked, as we walked toward a gate by the shore.

"Not exactly 'catching'..." Darien glanced at the gate. "Say, how do you feel about climbing things?"

I looked at him gamely. "Race you."

With a few carefully placed steps, I jumped up and grabbed the gate, my right foot landing squarely on the handle. Darien started to climb beside me, using the hinges as footholds, and we both swung over the top and landed on the other side at about the same time.

...OK, fine, he got there first.

"You've done that before," I guessed.

"Maybe. Come on, follow me."

"Are we going to get in trouble for this?"

"As if you've ever been afraid of that..."

"But, aren't there security cameras or something?"

"Nope. Not since they all mysteriously started malfunctioning a few years ago."

I faked a shocked gasp. "Darien! Are you using your powers for evil?"

He smirked mischievously. "Hate to break it to you, Kals, but it's not like either of us were ever white-hat."

"You've got a point, there."

We walked for a few minutes more, and the industrial design of London's oceanic shore, with its concrete ledges and tall aluminium fencing, started to give way to the more understated setup of personal waterspace by the Thames in a residential neighbourhood. Gates were lower, with metal bars swapped out for synth-wood pickets, and instead of blinding white floodlights, the path was illuminated only by the occasional streetlight and the moon.

"So... Are you gonna tell me where we're going yet?" I ask.

"Actually, we're there." He gestured toward a dock with what looked like a WaterGrazer, but in the waning light, it was hard to tell.

"That's not yours, is it?"

"Oh, no way. The owners just have terrible security."

And, for some reason, I found this incredibly funny.

Through my laughter, I asked, "Is any part of your life not a crime?"

He seemed to think it over for a few seconds, then answered, "Yeah, sure... probably... So, anyway, two questions."

"Yeah?"

"First of all, want to break the law with me? You can totally say no, of course."

"Abso-frickin'-lutely!"

"That's my girl!" He pointed at me with finger-guns, and started leading me down the boardwalk. "Oh, and Question Two: Want to see something cool?"

From his jacket pocket, he pulled out a mysterious device that looked vaguely like what would happen if some kind of heavily DIY'd multitool had a baby with one of those small, retro standalone flashlights from the late 20th century before smartphones were invented.

"What is that, the sonic screwdriver from Doctor Who?" I asked.

"Well, not quite that cool, but..."

He pointed it at the lockscreen on the chain tying the WaterGrazer to the dock and pressed a button. The device emitted a blue light in what looked to be one constant beam, but interestingly enough, my cybernetic light sensors picked up something else. It was actually flashing — just, very, very quickly.

After a few seconds, the light stopped, and the lock just... opened.

"What the—" I ran over, examining the lockscreen for myself. "How did you do that?"

"The lock uses an iris scanner. It's meant to illuminate the owner's iris and pick up unique patterns. With a little research, I found out who it belonged to and, with photos from their SnapKnot profile, recreated the pattern as a rapid-fire sequence of flashes. It tricks the scanner into thinking it's seeing a still, 3D eye."

"That's incredible."

"I know, right?" The left side of his mouth quirked into a proud half-smile, and I regretted not adding something along the lines of 'don't let it get to your head'.

"Just checking... You do actually know how to drive that, right?" I asked him, while he adjusted some confusing-looking controls on the WaterGrazer.

"Of course. Trying to drive one of these things with no experience would be incredibly reckless and dangerous... As I found out the first time I tried to drive it, with no experience... But I wouldn't put you in danger."

I shook my head. "Did your parents never teach you basic safety?

"They weren't really... 'around' for that." He shrugs.

"Oh, I didn't mean to—"

"It's cool. Past is the past. It doesn't define me. Besides—" He tosses me a hover-vest. "—Lifejackets. I can do safety. Aren't I just great at this?"

"Where's yours?"

"What?"

"Your lifejacket, dumbass."

"Hey, I said I'd protect you, Sarah Connor. I, on the other hand, happen to like danger."

"Has anyone ever told you you're out of your mind?"

"Yup. Many times. I've started taking it as a compli— hey!"

"Sorry. No unnecessary life-risking for you," I said, while doing up the clasp on the hover-vest that yes, he has to wear. "There's a reason there are two of these."

Back in the real world, the kettle beebeep, beebeeps, letting me know the water's finished boiling and pulling me out of my daydream. After refilling my mug, I head back into the living room, where the TH is still silently playing an ad. Maybe I should just get Premium...

On the left armchair, Darien looks up from his phone, which shows a cartoon about atoms on SnapKnot. When he saw me looking, he held out the device to show me.

There's a little cluster of black and red balls and a few orbiting yellow ones, and a speech bubble saying "Help! I think I lost an electron!" Another atom asked if the first was sure, to which it said, "Yes, I'm positive."

OK, it's a little funny.

"Hey, by the way, I had this idea. Have you considered trying to trace the payments Dr. Blayne's been receiving from his new sponsor?" Darien asks. "A lot of payment records are public, and it could help us determine who he's working for now."

"No, I haven't, that's a good idea..." I glance back at the atom joke. "What made you think of that now?"

"Well, I was looking at the drawing of the atom and thought the shading on its little protons and neutrons was cool, and I remembered learning in high school that protons and neutrons are types of hadrons, and there's a large hadron collider in Switzerland, which is also where the main UNBI headquarters are, and that made me think about this detective-y drama show I used to watch about UNBI agents, and one of the tactics they always used to catch killers and organized crime people and stuff was to follow money trails. So, I thought maybe that would work here." A few seconds of silence later, he adds, "Also, no, I have not been tested for ADHD."

I chuckle. "What?"

"People often ask me that when I explain my thought process."

"Ah."

"I'm on a waiting list, actually. Oh, that reminds me, I really need to call them back... Anyway, money trails."

He plops his phone down on top the the teleholo, connecting to it wirelessly, and waves away a visual cacophony of windows — SnapKnot, a text thread, Hopstacle Course, some article about an extinct variety of banana — before opening a new one in the web browser app. He types 'international business forum' into the search bar and their official website pops up as the first result.

"Anything 'official' should be public," he starts to explain — more TV show knowledge? — while navigating to the Science and Technology section, "but depth and detail of the information on those records can be pretty hit-or-miss. Especially if whatever company is sponsoring Blayne doesn't want to be found out. Still, there should at least be a statement of some kind. 'X credits transferred from Y account or organization on Z date', something along those lines."

"It's a place to start," I agree.

He nods. "And we might be able to get more information by our own means, too. By hacking... well, I'm not really sure what we'd be hacking, actually. I guess it depends what we can find here. Like you said: place to start."

In the bottom right corner of the hologram, a timer starts counting down to the return of Parallels from the commercial break.

"This'll take time, we can look into it later," Darien says, bookmarking the tab and retrieving his phone from the TH. It switches back to the show. "Now, for much more important things," he jokes, "Do you think Shadow Mask was behind the attack on Regos III, or was it all part of another Arcane Agency operation by Universe 36?"

* * *

At 22:30, an alert popped up on my eyeview, telling me I should get ready for bed. I dismissed and ignored it, like I've done every night for the past... well, the past as-long-as-I-can-remember. That does, of course, raise the question of why I haven't just disabled the notification altogether, or set it for a later time. The answer? Somehow, despite consistent and overwhelming evidence to the contrary, I still believe that one of these days, I'm going to fix my sleep schedule.

Y'know, because the jet-lag from three different flights in one day when I left Tokyo couldn't manage to reset my hopeless circadian rhythms, and 8:30 classes when I was in school couldn't convince me to break my 1-in-the-morning screen time habit, but a tiny little pop-up notification in the corner of my eye? Yeah, that's totally going to get me to go to bed at 23:00.

Speaking of 23:00, that's when my phone joined in with its own persuasion tactic: turning off my notifications and setting its screen to black-and-white. I clicked the 'pause for 30 minutes' button and ignored it, too.

It wasn't until 23:24 that Darien noticed the time, and I had to resign myself to my fate of going to bed at a reasonable— Oh, who are we kidding, he can leave now, but I won't be going to bed for a while.

"Sorry I kept you up so late," he says, slipping his phone into his back pocket as we walk toward the door.

"Hey, don't give yourself too much credit, Parallels is at least... 70% to blame."

"70?" He shakes his head with a concealed smirk. "Hurting my ego, Kals... Here I thought you enjoyed my company."

"OK, fine... 60%."

"60?"

"55..." I giggle. He laughs with me, then looks up to meet my eyes as he stops in front of the door.

"I'll see you later, then, I s'pose."

"See you later."

He turns to go, and just as I'm about to head back to my room, something from that memory before just pops back up in my mind.

"Hey, uh, one more thing—" I stop him as he reaches for the doorknob.

"Yeah?"

"Um— Well, earlier I was thinking about a few months ago, when—" Chill, Kalix. You're being weird. "On my birthday, when we went WaterGrazing? You called me Sarah Connor."

"Oh yeah, from Terminator."

"Why, though?"

He shrugs. "I don't know, you remind me of her. The whole 'normalcy descending into danger' arc, plus with the Dr. Blayne' situation, you're being chased for being special. However that may be. Sort of like a chosen one."

"Yeah, chosen to be some test subject, how flattering..." I mutter. Chosen to die.

"Hey, I think you're more important than you think you are. You're pretty awesome."

My eyes find their way to the floor, burning the tiles. The fact that I know my face is flushed is probably only making my cheeks redder.

"Besides," he adds, grinning, "you have a ton of main character energy."

"Hey, I do not," I answer, but I'm laughing through my eyeroll.

"You totally do." His hand lands on the doorknob, and he gives me one last hint of a smile before turning it. "Goodnight, Kals."