“You’re a hard man to find, Jack,” Pierson said, pacing around Claire; Moonshine, meanwhile, had gotten back to her feet, but was just standing there, looking at the scene in a daze.

Claire’s face was contorted in rage; just floating there in mid-air, frozen, moments before her punch would land, she looked almost comical.

“Fuck you,” she said.

“My, my, such a foul mouth on such a pretty thing,” Pierson mocked, and he reached over and cupped Claire’s face with his hand, leaning in to get a better look. “I have to say, whoever did this did an excellent job. No wonder I had so much trouble tracking you down.”

He shook his head. “Ten years, Jack. Ten years I’ve been chasing you, and now…” He grinned. “Now I finally have you.”

“Yeah, good job,” Claire rebutted. “Let me down and I’ll congratulate you.”

“Why of course I’ll let you down, you only had to ask.” Pierson replied. “Ross Kyle, stop hanging there and go sit on the couch, and stay there until I say so.”

Slowly, woodenly, unwillingly, Claire put her feet back on the floor and marched to the couch, where she sat down. Pierson turned to me.

“You know, I really have to thank you,” he told me. “All these years, I only managed to find the barest hints of where Jack might be hiding. The radar track, which was inconclusive, it covered too large an area. Then I managed to reach Moonshine, and she kept insisting she had no idea where PowerJack was, or even if he was alive, even when I exerted my powers to the max. I don’t know, I don’t know, she would say. I didn’t believe her, but I guess she really didn’t know.”

Obviously he hadn’t listened in to our conversation before, or he would have known that in reality Claire and Helen had been in contact for years; I wasn’t about to tell him, though. But I wondered how Helen had managed to refuse to answer Pierson’s questions regarding Claire’s whereabouts.

“And then,” Pierson continued. “And then I heard a journalist was asking around, trying to find the very thing I was looking for.” He looked meaningfully at Claire. “And I thought, why not, let her try.”

He smiled again, and chills ran down my spine. “I guess your fame is well-deserved. You managed to piece together the puzzle. Congratulations,” he said.

“Okay, now you have me,” Claire interjected. “So you can let her go.”

I turned to look at Claire: she was looking at me, her eyes full of fear – she was afraid for me, I realised.

“But of course I’ll let her go,” Pierson replied, and I turned back to him. Seriously? I thought. With all I know, with all the information I have, he’s just letting me go?

“Yeah, she can go,” Pierson went on. “After all, she has done her job. I have no more use for her: she is of no importance.”

He paused, and put a finger to his chin, raising his eyes towards the ceiling, pretending to think.

“In fact, I think I will let her go right now. Ross Kyle, kill her.”

I froze in fear, and turned back to Claire. She was looking at me, her face contorted, as if she were in pain: she half-rose from the couch, heading towards me, but all the muscles in her body were tense, almost as if she was fighting a battle with herself. And then she froze; her muscles were twitching, almost vibrating.

Slowly, she turned her head towards Pierson.

“N… No,” she said, forcing the word out.

Pierson sighed. “Ah, just as I expected. It will take more to fully bend you to my will,” he said. “I can’t just ask a hero to kill a civilian. After all, it took me three days before Ray finally started listening to me, and Moonshine,” he nodded to her, “She went on for a week, refusing to obey.”

He narrowed his eyes, looking at Claire. “I wonder how long you will last. But I’m getting ahead of myself, there’s still something to take care of. Anne Smith, be a dear and kill miss Shaeffer.”

Anne Smith, I realised, must have been Moonshine’s real name. I turned to look at her: she took a couple steps towards me, and then pulled her arm backwards, getting ready to hit me. I knew it was going to hurt: she wasn’t one of the strongest heroes, but she was still capable of punching way above her weight class, and killing a person would be no trouble for her.

In an instant, Claire was there, holding Moonshine’s arm in a vice-like grip; and no matter how much Moonshine twisted and pulled, Claire didn’t move, even a fraction of an inch.

Pierson, for the first time, seemed surprised, taken aback: he clearly hadn’t expected Claire to move to block Moonshine from hurting me. “Ross Kyle, do not interfere. Ross Kyle, let her go!” he commanded.

Once again, Claire’s face contorted, but she didn’t budge. “Fu… Fuck you,” she spat.

Pierson’s eyes widened; but then he laughed out loud. “Ohhhhh, feisty!” he guffawed. Then he stopped laughing, leaned in, and stage-whispered: “I’m going to enjoy breaking you.”

Then he straightened up, and said, “Ah well, she doesn’t matter anyway. I got what I came for. Ross Kyle, Anne Smith, follow me.”

He walked out of the house, the two heroes trailing after him, Claire giving me a helpless look as she went. I was just left there, in a daze after what had happened. After a second I shook myself, and ran after them – a bad idea, of course, but I wasn’t thinking straight.

Sitting at the far end of Claire’s pasture was a plane – one of the Association’s, I realised: I recognised it as a four-seat transport, slow but whisper-silent due to its RF cavity thrusters. That must have been how Pierson and Moonshine had come to Montana, how they had gotten to Claire’s farm without us noticing.

And now they were about to leave again, taking Claire with them.

“Wait!” I shouted. Pierson had already climbed into the pilot seat and strapped himself in. He turned a puzzled look on me.

“What are you going to do to her?” I asked.

“To Jack?” he replied. “Absolutely nothing, I need him intact. With Jack, well…” he smiled his creepy smile again. “Question: suppose I were to ask someone – I don’t know, the US government, or even the United Nations – for something, and suppose I had something to enforce my claim. Let’s say… An unstoppable force. What would they be willing to give me?”

He paused for dramatic effect, then he continued: “Anything at all, really.”

He closed the cockpit canopy; the plane took off, and it was gone.

I stood there looking at where they had disappeared into the sky. At first I was filled with despair; I felt helpless. I had almost literally handed Claire to her worst enemy, and there was nothing I could do about it.

But then I felt anger mounting inside me. I was determined to do something. True, I was stuck in the middle of nowhere, hours from civilisation, but…

I balled up my fists. “I’ll fucking show you who is of no importance, you bastard,” I growled, and turned and ran back to Claire’s house.

When I reached it I made a beeline for the phone; true, my cell phone may have no signal this up in the mountains, but landlines? Those were another matter entirely. I picked up the receiver and dialled.

“Hello, you have--”

“Jeeves, put Jenny on.”

A pause. “Good evening mistress Antonia. Mistress Jennifer--”

“Now!” I shouted.

Another pause, and then a click. Jenny’s voice came through the receiver, along with some beeps I recognised as her trio’s speech. “...There. Dio, keep aggro. Thago, DPS please. And Archie, keep with the spells, and see if you can fit a heal--”

“Jenny?” I said.

Jennifer stopped talking. “Tonia?” she asked, her voice puzzled. “What are you doing in my voice chat?”

“I have no idea,” I answered honestly. “Jeeves must have patched me through. Jenny, I need your help.”

Another brief pause. “What do you need?”

I blinked. “What, no complaints?”

“If Jeeves put you through like this, it means it’s something serious,” she replied. “We’ll beat Kefka next time. Now, talk to me.”

I quickly summarised what had happened that night. Of course she’d read the e-mail I’d sent and looked at the information, so she was mostly up to speed, but some things – like Claire being PowerJack – came at a surprise to her. She asked a couple questions, but became very silent as I described my encounter with Pierson.

“Okay,” she said when I was done. Then she added, “Fuck,” and it was the first time I’d ever heard her swear. “Tonia, things are never easy with you are they? Okay, hold on. Folks, did you hear this?”

A lot of excited beeping came from the receiver. Apparently the trio had been listening in.

“Good,” Jenny said. “Okay, team. Ideas, please.”

I sat there for a couple minutes, listening to the beeping, until Jenny exclaimed “Yes! That’s it! Great idea, Dio!”

“Care to fill me in?” I asked.

“Uh… Well, it will be quicker to just do it,” she said. “Just one thing, does the place you’re at have a cargo platform? And how big is it?”

“Ah, let me check,” I said. Cargo platforms were common, especially in isolated areas, to quickly deliver parcels and other stuff; they worked over a phone line, too, so there were little limitations to their use – except that they were quite expensive, and the bigger they were, the more expensive they got: large, container-sized platforms were found only in airports and other transport hubs.

I ran out, searched around the back of the farmhouse, into the barn, and I found it. I quickly ran back to the phone. “About three by three feet,” I said.

“Good, that’s enough,” Jenny said.

I paused. “Jenny, you do remember you can’t send anything living through that platform, do you? There’s no way I’m using that to get out of here.”

“Of course I remember,” my sister said. “Look, just chill for a bit. I’ll call you back soon.”

There was a click. She had hung up.

Suddenly, I felt all the stress I had accumulated crash down on me. It had been a long afternoon and night, and I had used my power a whole lot too.

I raided Claire’s kitchen for snacks, then laid down on the couch. I was extremely tired, yet I didn’t dare fall asleep, for fear of missing Jenny’s callback.

After what seemed like an eternity, the phone rang.

“Jenny,” I said, answering it.

“Turn on the platform and press the button to accept the transmission.” The line went dead again.

I rushed back to the platform, and did as I had been told. Slowly something started materialising on it. It looked like…

An office chair?

Yes, an office chair. It had been modified quite a bit, but it was still recognisable, even though it had lots of what looked like electronic equipment – computer cases, and wires, and cables – hanging below the seat; five black boxes were in place of the five rollers, and four thin metal strips arched over the chair, almost as if to form a canopy, and the seat had what looked like jury-rigged seat belts screwed to it.

I just stared at it. What the hell…?

From the mass of cables below the seat a camera sprung out, pointed at me.

“Please sit down, mistress Antonia. We do not have much time.”

I felt my mouth opening on its own.

“...Jeeves?”

“Please sit down, Mistress Antonia,” Jeeves repeated.

Bewildered, I sat down, a bit awkwardly because I had to squeeze through the metal arches to reach the seat.

A robotic arm moved in front of me, holding a headset. “Please put this on,” Jeeves said. I complied.

“Ah, testing testing,” came Jenny’s voice through the earphones. “Can you hear me, Tonia?”

“Yes, I can hear you,” I replied. Then I realised something. “How can I hear you? There’s no phone signal here.”

“Oh, I’m just bouncing the transmission off a satellite,” my sister replied, matter-of-factly.

“Jenny…”

“Don’t even begin with your is this legal stuff, sis,” she said. “I think we’re a bit past caring about that, aren’t we?”

“...Yeah, we are,” I conceded.

“By the way, are you still afraid of flying?” my sister asked.

I felt a chill run down my spine. My heartbeat started getting faster. “You mean this thing flies?”

“It should fly. In theory. Haven’t had time to test it, of course, I threw it together as quickly as I could.”

Jenny paused. “Tonia, are you sure about this? You don’t need to do this. That man is dangerous, and besides, that thing could break apart at any moment, I can’t guarantee your safety. Can’t we just, you know, call the Association or something?”

“No,” I said firmly. “He got Moonshine, and she’s the leader. Right now, we can’t trust anyone from the Association.”

“...Right,” Jenny said. “Okay, let’s do this, then.”

I looked around, looking for a control stick, but there were none to be found. “How do I fly this thing?” I asked.

“You don’t,” was the answer. “First of all, you’re not a pilot, and second, it’s too weird for anyone to fly it without lots of practice.” Jenny paused. “Anyone human, that is.”

I turned my head to look at Jeeves’ camera; he’d been staring at me the whole time, without speaking.

“Please strap in, mistress Antonia,” Jeeves said.

I gulped and nodded, and fastened my seat belt.

“Alright, Jeeves, are you ready?” my sister asked. “Please double-check the inertial stasis field, we don’t want to crush Tonia, do we?”

“Stasis field online,” Jeeves replied. I could feel a low hum emanate from the metal arches.

“Okay then. RF thrusters?”

“Online.” Another hum, more high-pitched, came from the black boxes that were sitting below me.

“Alright. You ready, Tonia?”

I took a deep breath, and gulped. “No. But do it.”

The ground fell away from me at incredible speed. I tried to scream but the voice got stuck in my throat; instead, I let out a wordless cry of terror.

Very quickly, we were high in the sky, and shot off in the same general direction Pierson’s plane had headed to.

I held onto the seat of the chair with a death grip; I’m sure my fingernails left deep marks in the hard plastic. I was afraid of flying even in commercial planes, which were about the safest way one could fly, but this? Sheer, unadulterated terror. I was unable to form a coherent thought for the first few minutes, but then some part of my brain realised I had to come out with a plan. It was like: okay, Tonia, you’re chasing after them, what now? What do you do when you catch them?

I had an idea, actually. Or the beginning of one. I’d come up with it while lying on the couch, waiting for Jenny to call me back; I’d thought about everything me and Claire had said that night, all the information I had, and…

It was a shot in the dark, really. But at that point, everything was. Speaking of shots in the dark…

“Do you know where the Association plane is?” I asked, suddenly realising I had no idea myself.

“We do,” Jeeves replied.

“It’s a law enforcement aircraft,” Jenny explained. “They must have transponders which can’t be turned off, to broadcast their location. Which means we can track them.”

“We’re catching up on them,” Jeeves said.

Ahead, in the distance, I could see a small speck, contrasting against the aurora of early morning; it was almost dawn, I realised. Slowly the plane got bigger and bigger, until we were holding steady about a half mile behind it.

“I don’t think they’ve spotted you,” Jenny said. “They don’t have active radar, so they can’t really see you except with their own eyes.”

“Okay,” I replied. I had gotten that far. But for my plan to work, I had to talk to Claire alone. Which meant I had to separate them: I couldn’t just wait for them to get to their destination.

“Are there any weapons on this thing?” I asked.

“There aren’t,” Jeeves answered.

“I didn’t know how much time I had, so I had to skip designing those,” my sister said. I couldn’t tell if she was joking.

“Okay then,” I said. “What’s the weakest spot in an Association plane? How do I bring it down?”

Jenny paused. I heard typing and whistling in the background. Then she said, “The tail plane, probably; you break that, and it will go out of control. They’ll have to eject.”

“Alright.” Well, here goes nothing. “Jeeves?”

“Yes, mistress Antonia.”

“You heard Jenny. The tail plane.”

I took a deep breath.

“Full speed. Ram them.”

To be concluded in: THAT WHICH WE CALL A ROSE