Three minutes passed, with a clack of keys, before the claustrophobic nature of the room began to get to me. The procession line of naked people had already begun. The Dauntless Titan didn’t attack them.

“I’ll be outside,” I said. “Unless there’s more questions.”

“No more questions,” he said.

“Okay.”

I wanted fresh air. I wanted to fly, to burn off energy, to breathe city air in my Earth. Bet, ideally, in a universe where it hadn’t all been ruined by Endbringers and aliens.

I settled for the catwalk at the end of the hallway, the railing near where I’d talked to Darnall and Jessica. A drop below.

I heard distant shouts and orders. A team getting organized.

In the wake of those conversations and that back and forth, I felt like I’d come close to an epiphany, a realization or an answer.

I just wasn’t sure what the question was.

In a way, I felt more secure than ever.

In another way, I felt isolated. The absence of others like a gaping wound, the stump of a missing limb.

In a way, I felt like doing something and making a concrete difference in the outcome of all of this was in arm’s reach.

In another… helpless.

If I could take the question and hold it firmly in my mind, then I felt like I could take the sum total of my feelings earlier and put them at the end, and algebra my way to a conclusion. We know this, that takes priority. Solve for X.

I wished I’d been able to talk to my dad.

A small, scared part of me worried I’d lost him forever. Because just like Byron and Tristan, Amy and I seemed to be trapped in a world where it felt like only one of us got what we wanted. Only one of us got a given parent. Only one of us got the Victoria Dallon closest to their heart.

Fucking barf.

Time passed, maybe ten minutes, my thoughts in a whirl. Moment to moment, I found myself regretting things I’d said, wishing I’d said other things, and being so frustrated I almost used my power to tear that railing out and crumple it into a ball. I could imagine punting that ball of metal railing into the wall with enough force it would embed into the hard white surface.

I have newfound power and control and they’re not letting me use it.

I want to get out there.

The railing squeaked with added weight. Battle damage from the raid on the base hadn’t been completely fixed.

“I talked to Amy Dallon, after I talked to you, the day following the attack on the community center.”

I didn’t respond, and I didn’t look.

“There are so many things I could say about that conversation. But I don’t want to get distracted. Suffice to say I told the Wardens I was worried. I felt like you were possibly right, saying she was dangerous, and I communicated that. They said they would keep a closer eye on her. The disaster with the portals and the loss of the headquarters no doubt made that difficult to impossible.”