“Of course,” Jan said. “Something went wrong.”

Megan nodded. “People started getting sick. We thought we took precautions, but…”

“I lost someone, several someones,” Jace said. “They traced things back, connected it to the suspicious material, the fake IDs we made to push stuff out into the right channels… they shut down the boundary.”

“The wrong people got stuck on the wrong sides,” Tori said. “I got stuck here.”

“What was the inciting event? You all triggered at once?”

“No,” Tori said.

“That’s the way it works. Multiple triggers within a minute of each other.”

“Days,” Megan said. “Days.”

“The portal,” March murmured. As heads turned her way, she said, “The portal? If there’s a lot of energy or interference, or connections or… whatever. We talk about powers passing stuff between people, but maybe they need to draw energy from somewhere to do that.”

“An open door between worlds as a big signal booster?” Jan asked.

March shrugged.

Jan nodded. “That would make it easier for six to happen, absolutely.”

“With the quarantine, and the inhumane treatment, and the suspicion we were doing it on purpose, as a biological weapon…” Megan said, trailing off rather than forming a full sentence.

“Well, that gives us some answers and food for thought,” Jan said. “But… you asked for help. Why?”

“The carousel,” Tori said. “Every day, one of us would become strong, and the rest are weak, or normal, or… or whatever.”

“I’ve heard about similar cases,” Jan said.

“We—there’s a loyalty effect,” Megan said. “It’s messing everything up. It’s messing us up.”

“Loyalty?” March asked.

“We couldn’t say no. We didn’t want to say no. And each of us have fragments of a power that influence people’s moods or views of them. Change how other people treat us. There were two who were problems. Two who had us robbing people, hurting people. One of them told us to like hurting people, and I don’t know—”

Megan trailed off.

“I did. A little bit, for a little while,” Jace said.

Tori nodded. “And for a while, things were okay, because we all knew that if we did something unconscionable, then in a few days we would be at the mercy of whoever we did it to.”

“Things changed?” Jan asked.

“One of our group took charge and—she went after the other. They were both the worst of our six… for very different ways. He was the monster but she—she had the strongest control power. She went after him and she took his day of being in charge. The day of having all the power. And she came after each of us, one by one.”

“To do what?”

“Take our days. And she got even stronger, if that’s possible.”

“What happened to her?”

“She disappeared. A while ago. And things have been okay for a couple of years now.”