[center][h3] [/h3][/center][h3][hr][color=#38547C]Keaton Plasse[/color][/h3][hr]
“Forty-seven calls?”

“Forty-seven missed calls today, yes.”

“And he knows everything. Because it was live-streamed.”

“That’s right.”

Keaton stared down at the blanket, her index finger dabbing at the raw flesh on her thumb, each tap managing a prick of pain that was more small than it was dull. “Okay.” A deep, painful breath in, then out as she sunk back into the pillows propped up behind her. “Okay. Call him.”

“—eaton? Keaton? [i]Keaton[/i]—fuck—Keats—”

“Dad. Dad, I-I’m here.” A stab of pain informed her of her blood beading at her thumb, and she wiped it on the side of her hospital gown, clenching her hand and placing it on her lap.

“Oh, thank god.” Her dad’s voice grew faint—[i]pulled the mic away from his mouth to continue repeating that line[/i]—before returning in full. “Keats, god, thank god you’re okay.” A quick exhale passed over the phone, and Keaton broke a small smile. 

“Yeah Dad, I’m okay now. I’m checking out of the hospital tomorrow.”

 “Tomorrow? But—you were shot, so—how—”

“No, I got grazed, not shot. The bullet [i]grazed[/i] me”—[i]and fractured a rib, which then moved out of place and punctured her spleen, the organ she ended up shredding by moving around, which would’ve compromised her immune system for the rest of her life if not for The Promise’s medical team, who went in and swapped her injuries out for a single large bruise that made it painful but necessary to take deep breaths[/i]—“but the doctors took care of it. I’m fine, promise. I just have a bruise left.”

“A bruise? How? Do they have… para doctors up there?” He was confused, but he was working it out, a hand on his forehead as he paced around their living room. Keaton could see each microexpression cross her dad’s face, her power confirming the scene for her, outlining his thoughts and worries. At what point was it considered a violation of privacy, her ‘guessing’? At what point did it cross the line, if she could near-guarantee herself getting away with lies?

“Yeah, Dad. They have para doctors up here. It helps with efficiency.”

There was a moment of silence as her dad thought over how to raise the next topic. He didn’t want to seem like an overbearing parent, and he wanted to believe—did believe—Keaton wouldn’t lie to him since honesty, especially between family, was one of the values he’d done his best to pass onto Keaton, but Keaton had a tendency to avoid topics, and he’d always figured it better not to pry, but this time… 

“Keats, what exactly do they, uh, teach you kids up there?” her dad asked. [i]Were they teaching paras to use guns? To use their powers to kill people?[/i] Those were the questions he wanted to ask, but he couldn’t, because he couldn’t see Keaton going along with that. Without telling him a thing. 

Keaton paused. These weren’t his ideas. He’d read them somewhere—heard about them from someone. People were panicking after the liveleak, after seeing paras—[i]kids[/i]—killing with such efficiency, and her dad hadn’t believed them, didn’t want to believe them, but… there’d been room for doubt.

“Dad, they don’t teach us to hurt people. The staff helps us develop our powers safely, to help us learn to control our powers, or help us learn to use our powers more efficiently, like in my case.” She sighed. “The machine gun, Dad, that was the first time I’ve touched one.” Which was true. She didn’t need to mention the handgun from the one firing range she’d gone to with some college friends. She didn’t need to mention a lot of things. “I used my power—figured out how to use it on the fly.” 

There was a brief silence Keaton let sit. Because. Because she didn’t need to explain herself, she figured, because the ‘why’ was obvious. And her dad sensed that. Running his own business for decades in central Los Angeles did that. Her dad prided himself on his people skills, his ability to figure out what clients wanted before they could even put it into words, and for most of her life, Keaton had thought herself just a student to the master. 

“Keaton, listen to me. You were a hero. You saved people, and you prevented more people from getting killed. Anyone who thinks they could’ve done better, well, I’d like to see them try. You were a hero. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.”

His certainty made Keaton’s breath hitch, and she blinked rapidly, tears welling in her eyes, which flicked around the room before settling on her lap. 

“Keats?”

“Y-yeah, Dad. I’m here, and… Thank you. That means a lot to me. Really,” she said, smiling as she wiped at her eyes. Thank god this was just a call. “I, um, I need to go now, but I, um, I’ll call you later.”

“Later. I’ll be waiting then,” her dad said, a smile on his face. He knew—a realization that made Keaton chuckle, prompting a chuckle from him as well. “Take care of yourself, kiddo, and keep up the good work.”

“You too, Dad. Love you.”

“Love you too.”

The call ended with a click, and Keaton sank back into her pillows, staring up at the ceiling. 

“Hey, Cara, can you check me out?”

“Miss Plasse—”

“I’ll drink lots of water and keep breathing like a normal person, okay? I’ve been doing fine the last two days, even without painkillers. I don’t see why I need to stay here any longer.”

“Okay,” Cara said after a pause. “You’re free to go, Keaton, but I’m holding you to the drinking water and breathing normally.”

“Thanks, Caroline.”

[hr]
School was out and her medical leave was still another few days, leaving Keaton with nothing but her thoughts to keep her company. Though it was tempting to end her medical leave and get right back into it, she held back. She was perfectly in the right for taking another few days off, and plus… she really did need to sort out her thoughts. Putting it off again would have been easy, but she’d already taken the easy way out. Multiple times. She figured she’d try the other way this time, which was why she was now sitting on her bed with her notes spread on the sheets around her. Lynn had been gone by the time Keaton checked out of the hospital, which was equal parts unsurprising and concerning. Worrying about Lynn, however, was about as useful as hoping she’d get better on her own, so Keaton chose to focus on prepping for their next meeting. How did what she’d learned so far tie into what she’d known before, and was the next step to continue stockpiling evidence or to finally take some action?

The Spire—that was central to all of what she’d learned in the past month, and it should have dominated her thoughts. Instead, she kept getting distracted. All along, she’d had one goal: getting off the ship. The ‘how’ was what she was searching for, and it was easy when she was innocent and the situation looked impossible. Now, though, she wasn’t innocent, and the situation didn’t look so much ‘impossible’ as it did ‘improbable’. The Promise was collapsing in on itself, as was its system. Paras killing in self-defense hadn’t gone over well, and now The Promise was teaching paras self-defense. In a more reasonable world, perhaps, this would all be a sensible reaction to the tragedy earlier that week. Unfortunately, Keaton lived in a world where people would sooner see her gunned down, and she was almost glad that The Promise’s firewall blocked out most social media sites. Who was to say what people were saying about her and her friends? Had she been branded as a terrorist behind closed doors, as a killer who deserved death? Her dad understood her, but that was her dad. What of his neighbors and clients? What of Keaton’s high school classmates and college friends? After this, was there still a life waiting for her back on Earth? 

She’d killed in self-defense, she might argue, but it hadn’t been so black and white. She’d shot to kill, and she’d shot a man who was down. He’d been reaching for his gun, but no one could guarantee he’d have picked it up successfully. Perhaps he would have fainted first, or perhaps the blood-slicked gun would’ve slipped out of his hands. Her power couldn’t confirm for her now, and even if it could, paras didn’t do well in court. Plus, there was the possibility of her father getting targeted. He was innocent, but terrorists didn’t care about that. All it’d take is one rogue gunman, one armed fanatic.

What dominated her consciousness more than her father’s death though, was that moment. The moment when she was mid-hyperventilation, exhausted and bleeding out internally, when Archie had fixed his sights in her direction, his mind and jaws set to kill. The moment when she’d realized aiming the gun in her hands wouldn’t change anything, when it seemed neither Natalie nor Eli could do anything to stop him when she just… accepted it. She was going to die, and that was alright. That’d be the end of her hopeless quest to get off the ship, the end of the fruitless search for scraps to a larger plot that might not even exist. She’d no longer need to worry about Arianna and the Faceless coming after her, no longer need to plan around Cara and the surveillance system, no longer need to pretend that she was in control or that she mattered in the greater scheme of things. 

Then, Archie stopped wanting to kill her, and Eli called her name. Then, the police arrived and Keaton was whisked away to the hospital. Then, she woke up patched up and in a drug-induced stupor with a doctor asking her questions she refused to answer until he filled her in on what had happened, and… now. 

Her phone buzzed with a text, and she snatched it up. Flour—the park. But was this it? The big reveal, the moment they filled everyone else in for the last hurrah? There was no guarantee the Spire was where the kids were, was what they thought it was, and there was no guarantee the Staff and Arianna were who they all thought they were either. But, after the loading bay, Keaton could see the sense in clueing everyone in. Everyone’s life was at risk, and the more the merrier if that meant more people got out in the end. If Lynn felt that it was time, then so be it. 

Picking up her notes took all of one minute, and she took another burning them in the sink, her phone in her hands. However things might go, she wasn’t about to leave a paper trail. Cara might be on their side, judging by the fact that security wasn’t busting down her door yet, but Keaton wasn’t about to make anyone’s life easier. 

Coming up with the text took a few seconds, given that typing the exact location out seemed unwise. A moment or two later, Keaton came up with a satisfactory plan, and the text was sent.

[quote=To Everyone]Picnic time. See you near the woods.[/quote]
“Caroline, when they open the message, can you tell them that it’s at the park down the street from Cianwood’s?” Keaton asked, walking over to her closet. 

“I’ll pass it along, Miss Plasse.”

“And Caroline, you have enough recordings of my voice to be able to fake it, right?” Keaton asked, fishing a worn denim jacket out from the back of her closet. “If I die, can you fake me for my dad? Pretend I’m planning on staying on board and becoming the new architecture professor or something?”

“… Are you sure about that, Keaton?”

“Yep. Thanks, Caroline, and hopefully I’ll talk to you later.