She was painting a seascape. She was always painting goddamn seascapes these days. Macy couldn't help it. She missed Florida. Not the humidity, which she had grown used to after nearly twelve years, but the sunshine. And the beaches. And the fact that it was...home. It was were Val and Henry were. It was were she had gone to college, where she had owned her first apartment, where she had had her first date, where she had gotten her first job. Her whole life had been there.

A life she couldn't go back to. Not now that she was an Emergent.

Macy put down the paintbrush and ran her hands through her hair, likely streaking blue paint through it. But she didn't really care at the moment. Once the locks had been long a dark brunette, but now they were cropped so they brushed the tops of her shoulders and were a shocking white. Back in Florida just about everyone she knew gave her looks of fear, mistrust, and even hatred. They had known her before, known what she had looked like before, and there was no way to hide it. People here gave her pale appearance strange looks, but they didn't know for sure. Fashion trends these days seemed to love pale, the paler the better. Or maybe she was an albino. No one here seemed to remember her, or her family. She had spent years of her life here before Florida, but that had been over twelve years ago. Here she was anonymous, no one. Just a regular person.

It was weird though. Being back in Haye. She had thought it would be different, almost unrecognizable since it had been so long. But that wasn't the case. Sure things had changed, but so many things were the same. She recognized her old elementary and middle schools, as well as the park she and Val had played in after school and on weekends. The bakery she had loved was still there. There were so many memories she had of these streets... She had told Val about it in the first email she had sent her since settling. [i]It's weird being back,[/i] she had written, [i]But a good weird. It's nice to be somewhere familiar.[/i]

She was jostled from her thoughts by a rapid knocking on her door. She raised her head from her hands and stared at it in confusion, almost believing she had imagined the knock before it happened again. Someone was knocking? On her door? Who the hell...at this hour? Macy looked over at the clock, wincing a bit as she saw the time. She had meant to go to sleep a while ago, but she had gotten distracted by her painting. Then there was another knock, and she finally moved.

The knocking wasn't loud, but she somehow knew it was urgent. The fact that it wasn't loud ruled out Jennings, who was the only other person who ever knocked on her door at night. Her landlord sometimes dropped by, demanding checks she had already given him, and she suspected he was trying to peep into her apartment to look for anything suspicious. He always gave her that mistrustful gaze, and it unnerved her. Kenny, her upstairs neighbor, told her not to worry about it. "He looks at everyone that way, even babies. You got nothing to worry about," he had said.

She reached the door, which was chained for the night, and peeped through the peephole. Two men stood outside, their faces unclear through the hole. Macy bit her lip, and after a moment she tentatively opened the door until the chain became taught. "Who are...," she began, speaking to the man with the beard and the shaved head at first before her gaze traveled down to the other man that he was supporting. "Tim?"" Macy asked, her eyes widening at the sight of his face. It was bloody. She experienced a sort of deja vu as she thought briefly back to the night she had met Tim. He had been bleeding then, too, in an alley behind the restaurant she worked at. She had found him there in the alley and had been unable to leave him there. She had known what he was, that he was an Emergent like her. It was a part of her gift.

"Holy shit." Macy quickly closed the door so she could unlatch the chain and opened it again. "Come inside," she said to the other man. She had quickly studied the fluttering colored light that surrounded him that only she could see. There was a sliver of gold that ran through it, same as Tim's. A telltale sign that he was an Emergent as well. She filed it away in her mind to process later.

Once both men were inside Macy quickly peered out into the hall. All of her neighbors' doors were shut. A good sign, probably. She closed the door, locked and chained it, and turned back around to face the two men. "Here," she said, gesturing to the couch as she darted over to wear a spare cloth was hanging on one of her mismatched kitchen chairs. She unfurled it and spread it out on the couch. "Lay him right here." Macy stood back to give him room. "What happened to him?"