The multi-tiered streets of the gleaming metropolis, usually teeming with vehicles, lights, and various sizes of life by this point in the midday cycle, stood almost totally silent.

            On the outskirts of the city, where the crisscrossing highways and geometric tapestry of office and apartment buildings finally became sparse enough for the fields to lay, a mass of citizens accounting for the majority of the entire population was gathered. Still, voices were almost as quiet as they were in the empty roads downtown.

            The field seemed to stretch endlessly on, yet every blade of grass was occupied by a bleacher or part of a giant’s shoe. Omegas lined the back, creating a perimeter, while Alphas crammed into countless folding chairs occupying the middle ring of humanity. Betas filled in at box seats in the center, and despite their three-inch height, represented almost a quarter of the space necessary for the guests at the funeral procession and memorial honoring the lives lost in the terrorist attack on the Convention Center seven days before. On the main stage, aided by speakers, family members and loved ones passed along last words for their fallen.

            David Hart and Evelyn Cade stood as far back as they could so as to prevent their skyscraper-scaled bodies from blocking the view of any potential latecomers. Shoulder to shoulder, arms crossed reverently before their chests, the stone-faced pair blinked away gusts of wind brushing their eyelids as they gazed around the monumental circle of mourners.

            There’d been no shortage of work for the two senior Omegas as well as everyone else in Aegis employ during the last week. Extracting the hostages, assembling an army of medical examiners and psychologists to prevent anyone among the unfortunate thousands of near-victims from mental collapse, then reuniting a sea of Betas with their families, and cleaning up the partially destroyed Convention Center. The list went on.

            In this moment, it was calming like little else to stand still and reflect on the actual people: Beta teachers, mostly, as well as some Alpha workers taken out and replaced by the infiltration team. All were honored equally as the different-sized caskets were carried on trays of flowers from the Memorial Gardens itself by suited pallbearers along a central line.

            “Didn’t Kayla say she’d be back by now?” David whispered into Evelyn’s ear.

            “She said she had fourteen new leads to follow as of this morning. She’s Kayla, after all, but she can still only work so fast,” the female Omega said. “Something she got out of the big guy’s head, I think. It wasn’t much.”

            “The one the kid knocked out… Roger. What about the others?”

            “The redhead’s still conked out after the King girl’s jump. Kayla says she’s still working on some of those threads. Nothing promising so far.”

            “Sonja Dixon. There’s a hell of a file on her,” David said. “What about Alice Webb?”

            “Our former tech guru, right. Kayla started with her. I suppose she thought she’d be the most useful. Connections and all.”

            “And?”

            “They really know how to pick ‘em. Nothing in that head but a grudge.”

            “I’m guessing the same for the grunt that Reynolds Junior grabbed up.”

            “Yes. And he didn’t even have the grudge,” Evelyn said. “We believe now that the sisters were really the only ones who could’ve helped, especially after the boys in that flying-whatever came out with holes in their chests.”

            “Insurance in case they failed. That has to mean something. I know Kayla must’ve already traced the maker down.”

            “Of course. Went cold, too.”

            “Of course.”

            “Excuse me.” A voice even softer than the furtively conversing Omegas sounded in Evelyn’s opposite ear. The source, at a height coming in just above David’s own impressive stature, placed a hand at her superior’s shoulder, brushing her ginger locks out of her eyes, and cast a sorrowful glance over the immense crowd beyond.

            “Yes, Angela?” Evelyn answered.

            “Dr. Everett came back to HQ for just a minute. She wanted me to let you two and Ms. Abby and Mrs. Reynolds know that she finished tracking the new leads and nothing came up yet, but she’s not done. She said she got some new ideas from the VTOL’s metalworks manufacturer so she’s following that next and she’s sorry she couldn’t be here right now.”

            “Never stops for even a minute,” David sighed.

            “Like that surprises you,” Evelyn said to him, before turning back to Angela. “Thank you for telling us, dear. Anything else?”

            “No, that’s it. I… should probably let Ms. Abby know now, too,” the slender Omega remarked, turning and scanning the horizon of outlying mega-humans, before spotting the elder Lindon seated reverently at the back beside Claire and Melody. Despite so dramatically dwarfing almost everyone present in physical size, the commander appeared almost compressed down to her former height as she cupped her right hand atop her knee, where two incredibly tiny specks were housed in her expansive palm. Her cold blue eyes held unwaveringly on the distant row of caskets, her lips taut, hardly aware of anyone else around her.

            “Wait,” Evelyn said as she gently caught Angela’s forearm.

            “We can tell her for you,” David said, knowing full-well now was not the time to speak to Abby.

            “All right,” the young Omega said with a nod. She brushed a thumb over her welling eyes, but put on a brave grimace. “I should get back to my desk. We’re processing… her now.”

            Alma Warren rolled over on the mealy fabric slab that constituted a cot in her temporary glass prison, nursing the bruises that painted her shoulders and knees. She’d known perfectly well there was no getting out of this once she’d awoken from the game, separated from her mechanical artwork, and strapped to a gurney. The woman put up resistance during transferal, of course, just to let them know they hadn’t killed her spirit, as she was wheeled through the whitewashed hell of Aegis. She dealt out swollen purple cheeks to at least three workers before she was beat back into submission.

            “Hello, Alma.”

            The Omega’s voice, high-pitched and cheerful though it was, seemed to darken the shadow-flooded holding room even more as its feminine notes rebounded off the translucent walls of the Alpha’s container. Footsteps followed, gaining ground, until Alma could feel the floor vibrating beneath her. She rolled her eyes.

            “Please rise so I can address you,” the voice of the Junior Enforcer continued.

            The formality was forced; that much Alma could sense, but still she sidled to her feet and padded forward in her fish tank. Gazing up toward the opening above, the Alpha watched Jenna Reynolds’ porcelain face fill in the black space. Her pale, billboard-sized countenance was so rigid it could’ve deflected a missile.

            “You’ll be referring to me as Enforcer Reynolds. It’s my duty to inform you that you’ve been processed into my custody. I’d tell you the time, too, but trust me: time is about to become highly irrelevant to you,” Jenna said, launching into the script immediately. Every word was grazed sharply between her incisor teeth.

            The Alpha sighed in resignation, crossing her arms.

            “Look, I’ve been through this before. I’ve seen it all,” Alma scowled. Gritting her yellowing jowls, she summoned a glob of spit and fired it on the altar of the glass cell before Jenna, who remained still. “Talk through your speeches if you have to. But just know you don’t scare me, little girl.”

            “Give it time,” the Omega murmured, twiddling a silky sprig of her strawberry-blonde locks between her thumb and index finger. “What, you’re saying you don’t recognize my face?”

            “Your faces have all started blending. Hard to keep track,” the Alpha grunted, though for the first time her beady black eyes zeroed in on the petite leviathan. The ebony of her irises expanded, swallowing the veins around them. “You.”

            “Aw, good, you do remember!” Jenna remarked with a facetious smirk, daintily patting her cheek. “I know it’s been a long time and stuff. Back then I was barely tall enough to see you up on that shelf where Mom kept you. But I’m willing to bet that you’ve got a way with faces, don’t you?”

            Alma chewed her lower lip until she could feel the salty crimson droplets pooling around her gums.

            “Really, it’s gonna make this whole process much smoother. You know the drill. Some of it, anyway. Things have changed since the last time we had you,” Jenna continued. She reached up, grasping at the glass cusp of the cell and tapping her fingers expectantly with the confidence of a concert pianist. Each impact rumbled down to Alma’s ankles. “I expect we’ll get along great once you remember who’s in charge again.”

            “Wanna bet on that, too?” the Alpha gnarred.

            “Of course,” Jenna answered. Her palm flattened to the side of the crystal cage, smudging steadily down the edge with an ominous squeak. Once in front of Alma, her fingers, suddenly tightening into clawed arches, pinched the willowy woman by the scruff of her jumpsuit and jerked her into the floor. After deliberately dragging the thrashing Alpha’s face through her own splotch of spit she’d left as a welcoming gift, Jenna plucked the creature out of her box and up into the darkness above. For a few moments the Omega brandished her immoral pupil in an iron-tight fist, silently savoring the show as the mad engineer flailed and scratched her way into indignity.     

            “This doesn’t mean anything,” Alma said at last once Jenna got bored and clamped her thumb into the Alpha’s stomach, briefly robbing her of air. “Your mommy played tough. Acted like she didn’t care. But she’s a softie, through and through. Couldn’t do anything to me that I couldn’t get over with a few thousand dead Betas.”

            “I’m sure that’s true,” Jenna admitted, raising an eyebrow as she lifted her prey higher, dangling her upside-down above her chin. The Omega’s lips parted, her tongue flicking threateningly from the damp hovel below. “But I’m not my mommy, am I?”

            For once in her life, Alma was speechless. In one swift motion, the Junior Enforcer’s fist softened, whereupon the wide-eyed Alpha traveled through the tube of pale flesh, was dumped directly onto the squirming tongue below, and forcibly wedged past Jenna’s tonsils and into the grim sliminess of her first session with a single gulp.

            Taylor Sharpe swallowed a sticky lump in her desiccant throat. She twirled her fingers around the narrow tube feeding morphine into her body somewhere below the mint-green hospital sheets she was currently vegetating within. The sounds of clinking, pouring, scribbling life in the medical center beyond her floral-sprayed room made nice enough company, but every once in a while during the past week, things got a little lonely. Which she supposed she deserved, given all she’d helped inflict on the city.

            Her arm, or whatever remained of it, was cradled by ceiling suspension in a variety of bandages and pins that had thankfully been numbed into oblivion after she was picked delicately out of the bloodied machine, once all Betas were rescued from the auditorium. She herself had insisted upon this, of course, viciously growling at any attempts by the rescue team to remove her until she saw each and every box opened and emptied.

            Though she’d been keeping her eyes closed for most of the day, catching hour-long naps here and there, a bristle in the blurry image between drooped lids finally prompted her to give the room a better look.

            At the foot of her bed, standing atop the plastic bay after a long ride down the Beta belt, was Ben Wagner.

            “Look who finally decided to show up,” Taylor croaked, immediately cracking a grin and a wink as the boy fought back an embarrassed chuckle. The pair stared eye-to-glassy-eye for a minute or two, competing in who could summon the most awkward smile.

            “Hi…” he breathed at last.

            “What, you’re gonna make me squint at you down there?” she groused playfully. Lifting her only free hand, she beckoned with a softly curling finger. “C’mere, small fry.”

            Ben hopped off the table and slid down the cushy slope of the blankets. He traveled cautiously along the rounded hill of Taylor’s leg below the sheets until he reached her outstretched palm, opened and awaiting him. Without even a second of the five-minute, hyperventilated pause he would’ve required a mere eight days before, Ben clambered upon the girl’s tender fingertips and rolled into the center. She scooped him up toward her face, though not quite as quickly as before, in light of her sapped strength.

            “Lookin’ good, kid. Like you barely came out with a scratch,” Taylor commented smarmily.

            “I’m just a fast runner,” Ben said. “How are you… um…”

            “Oh, peachy as hell. Just peachy,” she answered for him, glancing over at her ravaged limb inside the pristine white wrappings. “I’m gonna be looking into getting it replaced with a metal one. Maybe I can go around to schools and scare kids off drugs or something.”

            Ben snorted in response, scratching the back of his head as he leaned absentmindedly back in Taylor’s palm. He peeped up to her sky-blue eyes, a little more sunken than he remembered them before the incident.

            “Have they already peeled the band-aids off you?”

            “Basically. I just have to keep going in for check-ups every week for a while just in case. They’re afraid I’m gonna get overexcited or something since everyone wants to keep coming to see me at the house and say thanks and…” Ben continued, his words trailing off out of bashfulness.

            Taylor snickered, nudging her newfound friend in the arm with her thumb. “How many medals have they given you already? Four?”

            “Just one. I mean, well, it’s not, like, a medal, it’s a piece of paper from the city. It’s really nice, though, we stuck it on the community fridge, and-”

            “Wow, I was kidding,” the Alpha said, rolling her eyes almost to the back of her skull, her jaws hanging comically open. “Just yanking your chain, dude. You deserve it.”

            “T-Thanks,” he said softly. He peered over his shoulder toward the door. “That guy out there, in the Aegis uniform, is he-”

            “He’s there to make sure I stay out of trouble,” Taylor confirmed.

            “They really think you’ll try to-”

            “I think it’s more in case someone tries to come and finish me off,” the Alpha finished, her gaze dwindling out of the subject in her palm and down to the sheets between her legs. “Not like I blame them or anything, obviously. But I’ve still got a sentence to carry out.”

            Ben’s eyes bulged. “Y-You mean they’re going to p-put you with… with a-”

            “An Omega, yes. But not like how you’re thinking. Once I can move around on my own without this metal piece of shit dragging me around, I’m moving in to her box, at least for a year. Not for… what they usually do. I guess they’re trying something new with her,” Taylor explained.

            “Her?”

            “The Omega. Actually, the big one that caught you after your pyromaniac fun on the roof. Melody,” Taylor said. “Believe me, I’m… getting off easy. They… I mean, she made sure I knew that. Not the one who grabbed you, but the… one of the leader ones. Lindon.”

            “Lindon,” he repeated, his ears twitching at the mention of a name he’d heard like a ghost story whispered under breath between impressionable Betas about the hazards of existing, no matter how tall your parents were. “You mean like Corey Lindon?”

            “Sort of. She wanted me to know that he’s… well, she made it sound like this Corey guy is the reason I’m going with the big Omega and not… you know, going inside some big person’s shoe. She repeated it a lot so I wouldn’t forget.”

            “Oh. G-Good,” Ben said, allowing himself to relax at the idea of his gentle mountain-sized guardian taking charge of Taylor, despite the lingering uncertainty of his friend’s fate. “What… what will you do while you’re with her, then? The one who saved me.”

            “I’m not sure yet. Lots of reading and hearing lectures and reading some more. A little like a monk but without the rocking hairstyle. And I assume just thinking a lot about becoming better. Or good, at least,” Taylor said, chancing a shrug, but instantly flinching upon remembering that shoulder movement was still a challenge at this stage. “Not like that’s a hard goal to aim for. Basically any direction I go now would be better than where I started.”

            “That’s not true,” Ben said, sensing the conviction hidden behind the girl’s sarcasm.

            “Right.”

            “I think you’re selling yourself short.”

            “That sounds more like something you’d do,” Taylor said with another wink. “Pun intended.”

            “I’m serious,” Ben said. “I think you’re already good.”

            “Tell that to the million people whose lives I almost ruined because I never got out of my the-world’s-not-fair phase,” the Alpha droned, her tone drained immediately of color, even more so than her cheeks.

            “How about just to the one hundred thousand you chopped your arm off for?”

            A hush suddenly pervaded the room, allowing the medical hustle of the hallway outside to re-enter the gaudily wallpapered space.

            “I’ve got a lot of distance to go before anyone thinks about calling me even-steven,” Taylor said, bowing her head lower to her chest. A grateful smirk nonetheless tipped at the edge of her mouth. “And still. If they can thank anyone for that stunt, they can thank you.”

            “My arm wasn’t long enough to fit in there. It was just common sense,” Ben joked back, earning another shoulder nudge from her thumb pad. “Hey, it’s a big world. I gotta know my limits, right?”

            “Do you, though?”

            The Beta regarded Taylor’s stoic face: for once in their bizarre partnership she was completely and utterly serious.

            “Maybe,” he sighed, releasing the last of a weight he’d carried on his shoulders since birth. “Or maybe not.”

            “Count on it, kid,” the Alpha said, giving Ben’s hand a gentle squeeze between her fingertips.