Painful, in its own way, to have nobody to turn to. The hurt had been there like a block of ice, melting too slowly when I hadn’t had any warmth to reach out for, not any less cold as the water pooled. Not any less for the time that passed. Just… more ambient.

This was like that. Snag’s emotional effect was temporary. The pain ebbed out, made my fingers feel numb and tingly, made it hard to breathe, and made me feel more physically weak and less coordinated than I should have been.

I stumbled a few steps, and reached out to touch the wall for support as I resumed moving, entering the room Snag had been in when he’d punched his arms through the wall. It was reminiscent of a hotel room, but rustic enough it could have been a bed and breakfast. Two small beds, a bedside table, a desk, and a flatscreen television sitting on a dresser.

He had a mover classification, I was pretty sure. He’d used a trick to jump after the bus. I made sure to look up, to avoid any ambush in case he jumped at me from the space between the top of the door and the ceiling.

The room was empty.

“Snag?” I asked.

No response.

My emotions were jumping around as I bucked the worst of the effect. I wanted to have him to talk to, to pull me out of the mire of past feelings and into the present. It made for a wild, disturbed kind of familiarity, almost a longing, as distorted emotions tried to find reconciliation with my head. It ended up parsing him as if he was an old friend I was trying to reconnect with. The same kind of weird emotional fixations that made Stockholm syndrome a thing. Cult leaders and abusers used it.

When you had nothing, you groped for anything, even if it was the person who’d brought you to that point.

I’d reached out back then, too. I’d turned to the Wards, because my mom had been the only person doing anything to keep New Wave in motion, the team had been falling apart, and I’d needed something. Because the tests and briefings made me feel closer to Dean, reminded me of the study sessions. Because the first time I saw her after the Endbringer attack, Vista had hugged me, because Dean, and it meant something to me that there was someone else properly upset for him.

“Guys,” I said, loud enough to be heard in the next room.

“Victoria? Are you okay?” the voice was muffled.

I opened my mouth to respond. My failure to form words reminded me of talking to Dean’s parents again.

I stopped myself, trying to focus and put myself in the present. I took a deep breath that shook a little on the way in and the way out.

“Step back from the wall,” I said.