Outside Kyiv, Ukraine.

  They were in the car for an ungodly amount of time, in Gareth’s estimation. Enough for all of them to get their share of being sick of driving. They stopped to pick up supplies before crossing the border into Ukraine so that once Reeve got them through, he could lock up his telepathy, however he did that. Reeve hadn’t been kidding when he said remote. They drove through miles of nothing but farmland, never-ending fields dense with tall grass and dotted sparsely by buildings. Very sparsely. It was a little like home in Beatty, he felt, after fifteen or so miles of nothing, but with way more wheat or whatever it all was.

  They missed their turn off the first time. The narrow road was crowded with untamed brush, and grass grew between the beaten down tire ruts. After a quarter mile, the trees opened up to grassy hills and at the bottom were more fields, long and stretching, with a farmhouse nestled on the edges.

  “That’s him?” Alyosha asked.

  “That’s it.”

  “Have you ever been here?”

  “No.”

  Gareth stretched. “Well at least it’s true that no one is going to have any fucking reason to be out here to randomly stumble across us.”

  They pulled to a stop next to a green truck with strips of rust along the side, and spilled out of the car as soon as it stopped, eager to get their legs moving again. The place was smaller than he expected, and beaten up. The boards on the squat house were weathered and he could see places where they needed replacing. The roof was old and looked heavy. More unkempt brush grew under the windows. From there, it was a short trek to a tall, blocky barn. It was in better shape than the house–but not by much.

  “What is his name?” Alyosha was slower than the rest of them to get up and he was moving stiffly.

  “Edward. He speaks passable Slavic from his father’s side, but no Russian.” Reeve looked more on edge than normal, which, for someone with his caffeine addiction, wasn’t comforting.

  Gareth looked out over the fields that went on and on like a sea. “How much of this land is his?”

  Reeve quirked his mouth thinking. “Something like fifteen, twenty acres.”

  Alyosha whistled and gave Gareth a look, which he wasn’t sure what to do with. The guy had a spare house in Mexico. He shook his head at him, agreeing anyway. Gareth ran his tongue over his teeth, wishing again that the others were here. There was a gnawing wound in his stomach that ached when he thought about that, not knowing if they were okay. Knowing he was the reason they split up. He sniffed and loaded up his arms with their bags. “Let’s go see if this guy is home.”

  Reeve knocked at the door with increasing loudness before cautiously trying the doorknob.

  Gareth cocked his head at him and tried not to laugh. “This whole no telepathy thing is really killing you, huh?”

  He gave a nervous laugh. “It really is. I really just want to be able to know before we go in.”

  “Sucks being mortal like the rest of us,” Gareth smiled.

  The door was unlocked and they walked into the kitchen. It was fairly dark inside, even with the shutters open. In the center was a thick, rough wooden table. Everything was covered in dust.

  “He hasn’t been here in a long time,” Gareth commented. He found a light switch sticking out of the wall surrounded by exposed wires, but nothing happened when he tried it.

  “Let’s sweep the house,” Reeve said, turning in place. “At least it doesn’t look like there was some huge struggle here.”

  There were dishes in the drainer that had been clean once, but were now filthy with dust. Canned food lined the cabinets and a green, moldering loaf of bread was collapsing in on itself inside the short non-functional fridge. There was no one in the house, but there were clothes in the closets.

  Gareth could tell before they’d opened the barn doors. There was no mistaking that smell. Edward was hanging from one of the beams. The body had been there a while. Rats had been at him and there was a pile of something terrible on the dirt floor underneath him. Gareth pulled Reeve back and closed the barn door again. He took a breath and tried to work through the practicalities, because the wide-eyed look on Reeve’s face made it seem like he wasn’t going to be able to.

  “Is there anyone who’s going to be poking around looking for this guy if he falls off the grid? A landlord or something we need to worry about?”

  “No,” Reeve shook his head. “I own it.”

  “You own it.”

  “Yeah.”

  “How?”

  Reeve closed his eyes and shrugged, shaking his head. “It’s rural Ukraine. It was like five grand.” Reeve blew out a breath and leaned on the closed barn door. He dropped his head back and left it there. Not a lot of people ever saw it, but Reeve had an odd way of panicking. Gareth knew because he saw plenty of it when they first met and they were both fucked up in ways that didn’t mesh well. He’d go still, like a tree. Body almost limp, even his face relaxed. It was all beneath the surface and you could hear it in the uneven rhythm of his breathing; it would catch and pause at odd moments, then exhale in a quiet, staggered shudder.

  Gareth looked at him, the muscles in his lips and nose wrinkling, only partly from the smell in the air. “Hey, man, you didn’t do that.”

  Reeve laughed, and loudly.

  “He’s right,” Alyosha commented.

  “Jesus, I’m fine,” Reeve insisted, pushing himself off the barn.

  Gareth stifled a groan of no one said you weren’t and moved to follow, but Alyosha pointed to himself saying, “This is my area.”

  Alyosha stepped in front of Reeve. “Hey. This man—”

  “Edward.”

  “Edward, yes, he died years ago when Sol sent that order. If you weren’t the maniac that you are, we’d both be dead.” That made Reeve laugh again, but silently. “You gave him time, but you do not get to choose what he did with it.”

  Reeve didn’t answer but he didn't argue either. Alyosha put his arm around him and led him back to the house, which made Gareth feel that much more alone. It wasn’t like keeping Reeve’s freak outs in check had ever been his job, so he didn’t expect to be good at it, but he also didn’t expect to feel like the odd man out. They’d left for Reeve and now they were here for Gareth and it was all tangled up, so much so that Gareth couldn’t tell who had the high ground anymore. Who had the right to get angry. He liked knowing that. He liked the lines of debt being clear. And he liked not having to think about it.

  ---

  Sol LAHQ. Company Housing.

  Gerrit couldn’t sleep. He wouldn’t have normally described himself as someone who dealt with insomnia, but that had been changing. Some nights, it felt like his body had entirely forgotten how to sleep. He’d lay in the dark going over everything, feeling haunted by faceless Icarus. It was always work.

  Water. A drink of water wouldn’t help him sleep, but maybe getting back into bed would convince his body it was time to rest. He sat up. 3:58AM. With how he was feeling, by the time he’d tricked himself into a state close to sleep, praying his body would take the hint and make the final leap, he’d be getting up soon anyhow. He got dressed, teleported to the Neptune wing, and headed down the hall to the analysis room, where the Retrieval night shift worked managing reports and processing paperwork.

  “Sir?” Cindy and Scott, the intern, looked up with a start.

  “I couldn’t sleep,” he said, coming around the table to sit next to her. “Any major alerts overnight?”

  “No. We just finished going through the late morning reports that came in from Cairo and Kyiv.” She turned the monitor to him.

  Gerrit clicked through. There were a lot of messages reporting not a lot of news. Teams were covering ground, but nothing pinged until he hit one that woke him the rest of the way up. A team with a knack sensor out of Kyiv had radioed in that they were tracking a telepath and healer traveling together.

  “Cindy,” he urged, pointing, “did this team file a follow-up report? The one out of the Czech Republic?”

  “I don’t know, sir. Not that I remember. I assumed the subjects were from the Church.”

  He cursed under his breath. “They split up.” He stood, heart pounding again. That would change everything about their search. “Contact Kyiv. I want a status report on this team.”

  Gerrit teleported in front of Sage’s office before remembering it was four in the morning, but the lights were on in Sage’s office anyway. He knocked.

  The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  “Yes?”

  Gerrit went in. “Sorry, sir—”

  He’d interrupted something, he could tell. It wasn’t just Sage who was up. Penn was there and the two of them had a pained look in their eyes already.

  “What is it?” Sage asked.

  Whatever was going on there, he railed ahead. They’d want to know. “I think we have a lead on 37A.”

  Penn’s expression didn’t change and Sage looked sad. That wasn’t the sort of positive reaction he’d been expecting.

  “Prague, right?” Penn breathed.

  Gerrit swallowed a response.

  “I was going to call you in the morning.” Sage looked tired and heavy. More than usual. Gerrit realized Sage was wearing the same thing as yesterday. “Penn just sent people to deal with three dead Neptune agents found at 10AM local time outside a Catholic Church in Prague.”

  A lump welled up in his throat and all Gerrit could do was nod. If the agents had known it was 37A, they would have called for backup, but they’d all been looking for a group of four.

  He cleared his throat. “37A’s team has split up, sir. That team thought they were investigating a healer and telepath. They didn’t connect it to 37A because they were only tracking two knacks.”

  Sage sighed and put his head in his hands. “Update all the guidance to your agents—do not engage with any unidentified Icarus. No telepaths, healers, or invisibles, even if they’re alone.”

  “I will, sir.” Gerrit had never expected being Third would be like this.

  Penn nodded to them both. “I should make sure my people don’t need anything. It’s technically easy enough to contain, but calls like this are hard on my agents.”

  Gerrit wiped his hand across his mouth. “I’ll take you. I want to go to Kyiv anyway. Talk to their supervisor and see if I can help with the search. We can’t be far behind them.”

  “I don’t know if that’s a good idea.”

  He’d have expected that if someone was going to object, it would have been Sage, but it was Penn for some reason. Even Sage seemed a little surprised.

  “Why not?” Gerrit asked.

  Penn’s face was neutral, but his eyes looked a little hard. “They don’t know you there.”

  “Just don’t be gone long,” Sage told him. “You’re an officer now. We can’t be in the field all day anymore.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “It was a good catch,” Sage told him, voice softer. “The telepath and healer report that the others missed.”

  “Thank you, sir.” It was a kind thing to say. “You sure you don’t want me to take you?” he turned to ask Penn.

  His lips tightened, before finally relenting to nod. “Thanks.” He put a hand on Gerrit’s back and guided him out of Neptune’s office. “You’ve never been to Kyiv,” he said once they were in the hall. “Can I show you an image of the location in your head for us to jump to?”

  “Yeah that’s great,” he nodded. “Save me looking it up.” He closed his eyes and waited because having that dual input always made Gerrit motion sick—something his teammates and coworkers in Philly had always teased him mercilessly over, since apparently being a teleporter was supposed to magically make you immune to all nausea.

  Penn was in his head all at once and it was a tad overwhelming, the way he could go from barely noticeable to filling up Gerrit’s mind with that sort of pressure. He saw a brightly lit lobby with a gleaming tile floor and nodded. He kept his eyes closed to hold the image there and extended his arm. It would be a stretch, but he could do it in one jump.

  “Ready?”

  Penn put an arm around Gerrit’s waist. “Yeah.”

  He jumped.

  The temperature of the air shifted. The lobby was as Penn had shown him, but brighter, and there were more people. There was an immediate squeeze in his temples like oppressive telepathy, but more. So much more. Then all at once, it was gone and Gerrit began to wonder if he’d imagined it.

  Penn held onto him, stock still, a little longer than Gerrit would have expected.

  “You okay?”

  Penn nodded and stepped back.

  The lobby was small but clean, with tall glass windows, and after his early morning start, the afternoon sun was disorienting. A pair of children caught his eye. Two girls who were maybe sixteen years old. Seeing children that close to the front door was itself enough to give him an instinctual jolt, but then he registered that they were walking toward the door.

  “Hey,” he called at them sharply. “What are you doing?”

  They turned at his voice, confused and hesitant.

  Penn grabbed his arm and gave him a stern look. “It’s okay.”

  Gerrit shot him a look back, ready to teleport out of his grip.

  “We’re just going to get some lunch,” the taller girl told them.

  “It’s fine,” Penn said quickly. He did his best to turn Gerrit around but he shook him off.

  “Some lunch?” he hissed at Penn. Sure, Kyiv didn’t have the Atrium, but he knew they had food on site. “Are they—”

  “Students are free to come and go in Kyiv, just like the rest of us.” Penn moved to stand between him and the doorway. The girls were glancing behind them as they opened the door and walked out onto the street. “I understand it’s a shock, but it’s all part of the pilot program.”

  “And you’re okay with that?” he exclaimed. He’d heard they were trying some new format at the reopened academy, but he figured that meant they maybe abolished grades or brought in some sort of Montessori model. Not thrown all caution to the wind.

  “I’m one of its biggest proponents,” Penn insisted. “And if I am supporting this, me, Mr. exposures-are-the-bane-of-my-existence, what does that tell you?”

  “That you’ve lost your mind? This is an exposure nightmare.”

  He shook his head. “They’ve learned restraint and how to conduct themselves, unlike Academy kids, who go from zero to a hundred once they leave schooling. This program has had significantly fewer exposures proportionately in the entire time it’s been running than what I deal with in the single week following graduation in LA.”

  He huffed in disbelief. “Why haven’t we heard about this?”

  “Why do you think? Look at you. Because Mercury knows people will freak out unless we’ve had time to gather enough data showing that it works. So keep it down and trust Mercury on this.”

  Gerrit swallowed. It was hard to argue with your boss. It was harder when your boss could ostensibly know the future. If there weren’t other time-sensitive things, including a different student in clear and present danger, he might have pressed. “Which way is the Neptune wing?”

  “This way.”

  Following him through the halls, it was strange to see the mixing of students and agents. Weirder yet to see people in Venus blue lab coats standing around chatting with people in Mars fatigues and others in suits. It wasn’t that people were encouraged to keep to socializing only within their department, and god knows that Gerrit did his best to befriend everyone he met, but agents tended to stick to their own people, the ones they had the most common with. Sure, Jupiter and Mars were both part of Sol, but their day-to-day lives had very little common ground.

  The one constant was that they all seemed to give him an odd look, as if they knew he didn’t belong there. He supposed it was possible that the building was small enough that everyone knew each other, but there was an almost suspicious energy to it that he didn’t see them flashing at Penn.

  He flashed his best smile to no reaction.

  “Do I have something in my teeth?”

  Penn gave a surprised laugh. “I don’t think that’s it.”

  “Not the friendliest bunch, huh?” he muttered.

  “You know each office has a culture of its own. They’re just a little more insular than some.”

  “Sure, but...” A group of three elementary-age kids ran by, chasing one another and giggling, completely oblivious of them. “You’re here often?” he asked Penn. The telepathy pressure was back. Less than before, but growing steadily.

  “Enough. I try to stay up to date on the pilot program.”

  A short young woman walking in the opposite direction waved at them. The telepathy increased as she got closer, and Gerrit could only assume it was coming from her; an impressive feat despite her young appearance.

  “Hi, Mr. Harris,” the girl said. She had a brown bob and wore a Saturn hoodie.

  They pulled to the side to stop and talk to her and Gerrit sensed the pressure peak, then slowly begin to fade. It was as if they’d walked through some sort of cloud of pressure. He turned to look behind them as if he could track it moving past, but there was nothing.

  “Did you feel—” The question died on Gerrit’s lips as he suddenly lost his train of thought.

  “Anise,” Penn smiled. “This is Gerrit del Sol, Neptune’s Third, here to check in with Retrieval.”

  She dipped her head. “Honor to meet you, sir.” She didn’t look at him like an intruder, which he appreciated, even if his patience was getting a little thin.

  “Anise is an up and coming Saturn agent and one of the first success stories out of the pilot program.”

  That caught his attention. “Really? You like the program?”

  “Best thing to ever happen to me.” She dipped her head again. “I’m sure you’re very busy.”

  “Take care,” Gerrit managed awkwardly as she strode away without looking back. Penn touched his arm.

  “This way.”

  Penn dropped Gerrit off in front of the Retrieval offices and he spent the next half hour or so talking things through with the team. They were surprised and unnerved to see him there, but also seemed appreciative that he’d cared enough. They already had people in the field trying to find where the Icarus had come from and gone. They were doing the things he’d do. There wasn’t much else to be done.

  Penn wasn’t in eyeshot when he was done and he realized he didn’t know if he was responsible for bringing him back to LA, so Gerrit opted to text him and wander around while he waited for a response. The energy of the building was strange and he wanted to better understand it. He usually felt at home at any Sol office. Sure, he may not know the layout or which department breakroom always had the best snacks, but he’d never felt foreign before. He came across the Pluto wing, the Uranus office, and the small dining space, where he helped himself to a coffee and a meal bar and stood by the entrance to the cafe where he could watch everyone. Teleportation always left him hungry.

  A tap on his shoulder made him turn. A man in his forties with short brown hair and a grey speckled beard was standing there, a hefty backpack in one hand and a small stack of papers in the other. The papers were heavily creased, as though they’d been folded and shoved in his pocket.

  “Excuse me,” he said with a smile. His accent was western European, but Gerrit couldn’t immediately place it. “Can you tell me where the Uranus office is?”

  He’d pronounced it with a hard ray sound in the middle of the word, which Gerrit found jarring, causing him to go silent for a beat.

  “Yeah, actually,” he nodded belatedly. “One floor up and stay left. No...yeah, stay left.”

  “Thank you.” The man slapped the papers against one thigh. “I just transferred. You Sol people really love your paperwork.”

  Gerrit smiled awkwardly with a sympathetic laugh as the man walked off. What the fuck did that mean? He stared at the man’s back as his mind churned. ‘You Sol people.’ It would make some level of sense if he was a newly discovered recruit, maybe, but if that were the case, he wouldn't have described himself as a transfer.

  It came all at once, a vertigo-inducing thought. Of all the explanations as to why Kyiv didn’t feel like Sol, that was one idea that hadn’t even crossed his mind. Because it wasn’t possible. It just wasn’t. He needed Sage and Casper to help sort this out. He took a breath to teleport.

  Gerrit.

  Penn’s voice in his head ground his synapses to a halt. At a measured pace, Gerrit walked to the nearest table and took a seat. He waited in a silent void. After a minute or an hour, Penn walked into the cafeteria with a tall man in a smart suit. There was something familiar about him. They got close enough that Gerrit could only see from their chests to their knees, because he couldn’t move his head.

  “Now, Mr. Harris,” came the man’s voice, “I feel like we talked about this. About you keeping an eye on him? I’m due in Paris.”

  “You know what it’s like to wrangle teleporters.”

  “I’m a little more heavy-handed than you are.”

  British accent. Gerrit was racking his brain to connect the dots. Where did he know this man’s face from? But it was like grasping at fog.

  Penn sighed. “It won’t be a problem.”

  “I know it won’t be a problem because I’m going to fix it.”

  Gerrit knew pain and only pain and then nothing.

  With a sniff, he opened his heavy eyelids. Penn was there standing in front of him.

  “Hey,” Gerrit smiled. He sipped his coffee and made a face. It had gone completely cold on him. “Did you get a chance to talk to your people? Because I really ought to get back to LA. They don’t need me here.”

  “Yeah, I’m good,” Penn told him, though his voice was a little off.

  “Are you sure?” he pressed. He didn’t want to pressure the guy. “If you need some more time, you can always text me and I’ll come get you.”

  “No, I’m all set.”

  “Then let’s go.”

  ***