"An im did se, "yuh siem lost, wah yuh a do 'round dis part?" an mi se, "well mi clearly a luk fi sumn. im 'bout dis hai an 'bout dis waid," an di guy did se, "well, kypy luk nimrod 'cause mi nuh have no clue a sumn dat big", an..." he paused contemplating the words coming out of his mouth. "This is stupid, why'd I even give him a Jamaican accent? I don't even know a Jamaican!"

He put down the camera, zoomed in on Aris's kitchen, where he was having a conversation with Elise. From his gesturing, Lyle guessed he was talking about some event and dubbed it over with whatever spiel he could come up with. "This sounded better in my head," he said to himself. Lyle laid down on the sloped roof tiles as he gazed into the abyssal night sky, reconsidering his life decisions. "I forgot how boring stakeouts are. It's been weeks since Elise has done anything worth noting. Her news forums were such an interesting read on how many counts of conspiracy I could pin on her, but now it looks she's given up on her rebellious phase, settled down with someone." He jerks his head up to look at the distant window. "Or university is getting that intense." He lays his head back down and takes out his phone.

"Honestly, I could careless about her boring student life. I was hoping she'd be associating with someone more interesting than him." He opens Aris's IP logs, "for someone associated with a woman on a watchlist, he sure is..." Lyle reads through Aris's visited sites, "...surface level. Searching outdated research at best isn't really what I'd call thrilling. He doesn't even interact with the conspiracy forums he finds himself in. It's like spectating a spectator; he pisses me off!" He sits up, putting his phone on his lap. "If he's not in his bum ass room all day procrastinating, he's with some side chick who doesn't know what personal space is." He checks his phone, looking at the time. "I could've given this bore to an intern to deal with, but noooo, I just had to do it myself, and to what? Look busy?"

"It makes sense why most of the Gardeners are old heads. While they got nothing better to do, I could be doing a million more things than watching some kid on a date," he said to himself as his legs grew restless. "I could've been on a date of my own!" Lyle pouts in self-inflicted anguish. Lyle ponders at his palm, slightly dirtied from the roof. He wipes the dirt off his pants as he gets up pacing end to end to the roof. "Pops would've made this into a lesson of being independent of my powers and patience," he spawns a towering, well-dressed figure within his vision, "and go on all about the virtues of being a normie, but..." Lyle contemplates his words as if his apparition were a real person. "He doesn't account for how I can actually use my powers for more than winning arguments against mom," he complains. "I could save myself hours if I could just..." he reaches weakly at Aris.

"Getting close to an epiphany isn't the same as reaching it," Anais scolds him from behind.

"Yeah, and being able to do this," the apparition of Anais dissipates. "Isn't the same as not being able to. I would've liked not having to go through your 'experiments' for it, but I guess nothing comes easy with you." Lyle shuts his eyes as he turns around, pacing in the opposite direction. "At least I can see through her eyes without mangling either of our heads," he says as he watches the conversation from Elise's perspective, but still unable to hear it's happening. "Isn't that right, Aris?"

"You've been quiet since we got back," Elise said, studying his face.

Aris shrugged as he swirled his drink. "It’s funny, even when he’s gone, I can’t get my mind off of him.”

"Why’s that?"

“White's been... intense lately." He caught himself, shook his head. "Never mind. I shouldn't have mentioned it." His voice had gone flat—the same tone he used when talking about his family. She didn't push. Not directly. Instead, she waited, took a sip of her drink, let the silence stretch just long enough to become uncomfortable.

"It's handled," he added, unprompted.

—Which meant it definitely wasn't.

"Handled how?" She kept her tone light, curious rather than concerned. "Like, you figured out what he wants, or...?"

"I'm working on it."

"Mm." She traced the rim of her glass. "I had a professor like that first year. Everything I did was wrong, but he'd never say what right looked like." She glanced at him. "Felt like he was waiting for me to just... break."

Aris's jaw tightened slightly. "What'd you do?" he asked, quieter now.

"Dropped the class." She shrugged. "Not an option for you though, is it?"

He remained silent, the answer obvious. She let another beat pass.

"Is it the workload or..." She tilted her head. "The way he ‘teaches’?

Aris stared into his drink. For a moment she thought he'd shut down completely. Then:

"Both," his thoughts contradict, but the workload is doable if I spend enough time; he teaches just fine. “Neither.” But if it was so manageable, then why am I struggling? "I don't—" He stopped, frustrated. "It doesn't matter what I do. He's already decided I'm not... enough."

"Enough for what?"

His laugh was bitter. "To be a Strider, probably. Probably to brag to my dad that he didn’t raise me right and that excluding him from my life was a mistake, or some petty bullshit."

—There it was.

"And when you're not enough?" she asked softly.

He didn't answer. But his grip on the glass tightened.

She wanted to say something reassuring, something that would fix it.

—Sometimes, the worst thing you could do was offer false comfort.

"You know what I think?" She waited until he looked at her. " He's testing whether you'll fold or fight back. And I think he's actually looking for the second option more."

"You don't know him."

"No." She held his gaze. "But I know what it looks like when someone's drowning and trying to pretend they can swim."

For a second, something cracked in his expression, something raw and desperate. Then the mask came back.

"I'm fine, Elise."

"Okay." She didn't believe him, and her tone made that clear. But she also didn't push further. "Just... You know where to find me. If you're not."

He nodded, not quite meeting her eyes.

She let him have the silence this time. Elise downs her stout.

"I don’t think I’ll intrude any more than I have,” she picks up her bag. “I’ll be seeing you.”

"It’s late, you take the bed. The sheets were just cleaned."

"And you?"

"Couch."

After some internal deliberation, Elise accepted the offer.

When she entered his room, the only lived-in space was his desk, papers scattered around a running laptop.

She caught her reflection in the wardrobe mirror and froze.

The room felt wrong. Not unfamiliar, the opposite. She stood here, in this exact spot, looking at this exact mirror. Her hand drifted to her temple, where Lyle's mark sat buried in her skull.

The headache didn't return. But the sense of wrongness did.

The weekend passed with little being said between them, tension lingering.

Elise sat in her seat for the start of the second part of the Introduction to Forensic Science module. She didn't pay much attention to the timetables, but all she knew was that the second stretch of the module would be taught by someone else, but who? That was for her to figure out, given the shakeup in staff, caused by the national scandal at the start of the academic year.

The stage where the professor is normally situated in the auditorium is empty, with a lab coat hanging on the chair of a small open office space. With a projector beaming across the wall. And a machine covered by cloth is trolleyed out by the side of the stage, a familiar silhouette. Elise looks over towards the end of the stage, spotting a figure of someone waving at the couriers while on a phone call.

And then, as the couriers departed, Phoebe emerged onto the stage.

—Quite the surprise.

Phoebe puts her hands together, takes a deep breath and plasters a great smile. "Good morning, everyone. I'm Phoebe Hayley Monet. And I will be teaching you forensics for the time being. Particularly on how Omega has and will affect this field. Could someone tell me how Omega affects forensics?"

Elise sinks into her seat, ducking into her sweater as she tries to conceal herself from her.

A student dressed in a graphic tee raised their hand while others watched sceptically, wondering why someone they assumed was a student was teaching. Phoebe acknowledges the raised hand, "The biology-altering properties of Omega have had cases where, when contaminated in DNA, have altered genetic markers, fingerprint evolution or even cases of emitters altering the evidence, tampering with the crime scene's timeline, such as—"

"That's a perfect textbook explanation! And what you all will learn is not only how to cope with these cases, but also see how recent developments have made use of these alterations to your advantage, such as in the case used in the recent scandal of being able to restore compromised evidence and prove the influence of an emitter," Phoebe continued with the lecture as the presentation loaded onto the projector.