A welcome distraction. Notes and files. Clarification of intended meanings, answering short questions, verifying if I was being sarcastic or literal. It let me refocus my brain to a task without feeling like I was tuning the world out.

Question one: I’d used ‘gut feeling’ twice. What did I mean by that?

Answer: …

I’d convinced Fume Hood to get back into the game. She’d planned to retire and I’d played a big role in convincing her to stick it out and keep trying to help, after she got shot. Now… what? Did she think? Did a Titan maintain any trace of its old psychology? Was she trapped in there, or was she gone, good as dead?

Something told me this wasn’t in any way reversible. Gut feeling.

I refocused on the screen. The line of thought didn’t really connect, and it was only by chance that I’d circled back.

Like doing something I’ve practiced to death. Holding a gun and knowing I could pick it up and hit the target, there’s a certainty and underlying confidence. Take away the practicing from the equation, and that’s how I felt about things like smashing Teacher’s crystal.

I was calling on my time with the Patrol for that one. I’d already done the gun safety and practice at my parent’s behest, once upon a time. All of us kids had. But I’d elected to do it again. Back then, it had been about getting through the days.

Question two: You frame this ‘gut feeling’ as agent-derived. On a scale of one to ten, to what degree could you separate your own biases, hopes, instincts, preconceptions, or own mentality from this impression the agent provides?

What do you think, Fragile One?

Hard to draw a firm line.

Seven. Seventy percent.

There were more highlighted sections with just short instructions. Clarify:Earth. Clarify:Date. Did I mean Gimel or Bet? Did I mean today or yesterday?

Clarify:Event. Did I mean the Fallen raid or the prison? My note on Seir.

Clarify:Team Composition. Who was with me? Which members of Breakthrough?

When someone had a panic attack, it was important to touch base, ground them. Where are you, what do you see, what can you touch? What do you hear?

I wasn’t in the midst of a panic attack, but I appreciated the chance to ground myself. Place was a heck of a question when worlds had already been tangled with the layering of what was more or less another dimension over the third. Depending on whether portals were in the way, walking in a straight line in one part of the city could carry you to a point in Gimel or a place in Earth N.

Time was even more of a mind-screw. It hadn’t actually been that long between the time Jessica had introduced me to the group that would become Breakthrough and today.

Team composition…