"The First? You… uh… you look a little smaller than I remember…"

Christopher, because that's what the man had called himself, smiled wider at this as he let out a laugh. I shook his hand before he retreated back to his seat and I instinctively reached out with my Area Sense. The room seemed like a rather small board room, with a shabby table at the center and a few shelves stocked with random books and decorations that really didn't seem to make sense for the space. It almost looked as if the room had been pulled right out of a hospital or some law office and dropped in the back of what was essentially a sports bar.

Even though I was meeting with Calypso and a man that at least called himself The First… inside of the Common Ground where I should already theoretically be safe, I couldn't help but keep my extra sense activated. I attempted to highlight the man and unfortunately found that it errored out. That itself was strange and I couldn't help but look at him a bit suspiciously.

"Also uh… why… why can't I scan you? It gives the same kind of error when I highlight someone who is a family member of one of the other Augments. Which, by the way, that's a terrible way to do that… I mean, it kind of makes it more obvious. And where the hell have you been with how the god damn craziness going on out there? I mean, shouldn't you be, I don't know… leading us when Axio is trying to bring chaos everywhere?" I said, unable to keep myself from rambling even if I should have been a bit more put together and focused. Christopher looked over at Calypso who gave him a reassuring smile and nod.

"He should know…" she said, her voice coming out in a soft, melodic tone. I was almost surprised to hear her talk again after she had been so insistent about using the chat feature the previous night.

"Should know what?" I asked curiously.

"Guess I figured we'd beat around the bush a bit before we got to this," Christopher said with an almost humorless laugh. "I'm uh… I'm not really The First anymore. I don't have my powers… or the ability to make my appearance match my stats. I'm disconnected from the system now."

To say this knocked the wind out of me would be a lie. Maybe I wanted to feel that way, but I had sort of suspected something had happened that had been keeping him away from things, especially with the abrupt way his ceding of territories had happened. But I hadn't expected for him to somehow be completely powerless either. Up until just that moment, I think a small part of me had been holding out hope that uncovering where The First had been hiding was all I would need to do to… maybe have his help? His protection? It had only been two weeks since things had started, even if it had felt like a year, but that alert had stayed crystal clear in my head, right along with the feelings I had had about it.

Had I been the reason he had to step back? Had something happened when he saved me from my death?

"Was it because-"

"It was," Christopher said, his eyes meeting mine and I could immediately tell he knew what I was going to ask. There was no sorrow in his eyes like I might have expected to see, instead I found… pride? "In order to add you to the wave, I had to remove myself from the system. It was the only way to keep you from dying… even after I borrowed that rewind power of yours…"

"You.. borrowed my power? How-" I stopped myself as I realized how silly the question might have been. I didn't think The First had copying or mimic abilities since I felt like that was something Jon would have mentioned before with how obsessed he had been, but that certainly didn't mean it wasn't somehow attached to his Hidden Power. So instead, I asked the more obvious question. "How did you borrow a power from me when I hadn't even been Augmented yet? And.,. And why would you even do that if it meant removing yourself? You were so strong… you saved so many people… I'm just… I'm just me…"

Maybe the only confirmation I had had that this was The First was Calypso's word. Maybe I had no idea what his goals were. None of that mattered to me in that moment as I felt a rush of emotions passing over me.

"All of the people… all the ones that died when Clockwork Tyrant attacked… I only barely stopped things from getting worse… and that was only because of everyone who was there to help…"

"Do you know how many people I failed to save in the last decade?" Christopher asked, clasping his hands together atop the table.

"I… sorry I didn't really follow Augments as religiously as some people did before all of this… … so many people in New York are dead because of Clockwork Tyrant. You always seemed so strong in the fights my roommate would show me, I don't think I ever saw you lose."

"He rarely did," Calypso agreed and I eyed her suspiciously yet again. If Christopher didn't have the system any more, then it would make sense that she would need to speak for him to hear her too, but I very distinctly had remembered feeling my own emotions war against me when she had spoken the few times I had heard her before.

"Yes, I rarely lost a fight, and those I did had been early on in the system, but even then there are millions of people that are dead, all because I couldn't keep my fascination to myself," he said solemnly avoiding meeting Calypso's eyes as she reached over to set a hand on his shoulder.

"That's… your fascination?" I said, feeling like I was already gaining more questions than answers.

"Sorry… I have a bad habit of going on tangents… we will get to that," Christopher said, looking back up from the table as he met my eyes again. "You wanted to know why you… right? Why I put you into the game when it meant I was going to be removed?"

"I… Yeah, I did," I said, taking the offer to get back on topic.

"For almost my entire time as The First, I never failed to save someone who was right in front of me… I was always fast enough or strong enough. I… I think I kept myself going knowing I had always managed to keep the people I could see safe, until-"

"Until me…" I said, unable to stop myself from cutting him off and finishing the thought that he was dragging his feet getting to.

"Until you…" he agreed. "Firefist kept trying to draw the fight out into public spaces and I had thought I had led him to at least a spot that would minimize collateral damage. There were roadblocks everywhere which were natural draws for the civilians who just can't help themselves… It was just... Bad luck. You were the very first person that had become collateral damage because of one of my fights… and I couldn't leave it alone while I had the power to fix it…"

"Heh… bad luck…" I said, letting out a halfhearted laugh. "It's funny… Angie… my P.A.I. that is… tried to say me getting Augmented was a luck thing when my base stat for it was a 10… But it's kinda hard to believe that when all of… well this has happened since it then. It feels like Axio wasn't trying to burn the whole world down until now. I mean, yeah the fights between Augments were brutal and there was the occasional city catastrophe, but he had never just released someone who would kill thousands like it was no big deal…"

"Yeah… Axio… he wasn't always like this. I mean.. He always had a bit of a flair for the theatric, but he wasn't quite as…"

"Insane?"

"That's putting it mildly," Calypso chimed in. "I still wonder if it had to do with the defrag thingamajig it was taking him all that time to run. A few months ago you had been convinced it was going to be finished pretty much right before the Tenth Wave started."

"De…frag?" I said, desperately wishing Jon was with me.

"Wish I could say… It's like I told you earlier Cas- er… Calypso…" Christopher said, turning to look over at her with a bit of a sheepish smile. "I didn't realize it until a few days had passed, but everything from the last few months before that fight with Firefight is just a blur now."

"Yeah, you still quite haven't explained how that happened," Calypso said, her brow scrunching together. Instead of answering her, he tapped on the table with one of his hands as he looked back over at me.

"Your Hidden Power… do you mind telling me how it works? Mine lets me borrow the innate power of anyone who's Personal Array has been activated and it gives me the general idea of how it works, but it's still a shadow of the original version and because of the way we originally got our Augmentations, those powers didn't quite activate exactly right."

"Aren't they… built into the powersets?" I asked, distinctly remembering the different options I had been presented with when I was first going through the progress. Each one had had its own Hidden Power listed, even if it had been nothing but question marks.

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"That's-"

"Christopher… are you sure you should be telling him all of this?" Calypso asked, her hand squeezing his shoulder. He reached up and patted her hand while shaking his head.

"Secrecy is why we're where we are… I never should have set the code to keep this hidden, even if it did slow Andrew down. I'm not bound by the rules anymore, I'm going to say what I want to say."

"As long as you're sure," Calypso said, removing her hand from his shoulder as she sat back into her chair.

"The Hidden Powers are actually innate… everyone on the planet has one… or, I guess everyone has had one since the Augmentation Array finally spread out. Axio explained it to me once over a decade ago, but we all have the potential for powers, we just have to have a way to access them. Which… is kinda what I accidentally made possible."

"Huh… So… I was always meant to have… time control powers? That's… what?!" I was genuinely flummoxed by this bit of information and I felt my own desire to dig for more information warring with my desire to know what we were already talking about. But really, who could actually ignore the fact that they were being told they had the innate ability to control time?

"Apparently… yeah." Christopher nodded, his hands reclasping together. "It's uh.. It's why I was able to save your life… I.. I saw you die Loophole… Firefist… He got to you before me and-"

"I don't think you need to share all the details," Calypso cut him off and I found myself instantly grateful, though I kept looking at her. My Area Sense was still activated and I knew it was because I could feel a few forms moving in the hallway adjacent to me. That didn't necessarily mean a lot though since I knew the Null Zone in the Common Ground didn't disable powers the same way a Dead Zone did.

"When someone dies… their Personal Array stays active for less than a minute. When I felt yours and realized it would let me rewind things… I didn't even think twice… Sometimes you just move before you think about the consequences," Christopher explained. "I remember the fight with Firefist clearly… I remembered why I had rewound, so I didn't think anything of it, I just… I did what I had to do to make sure I saved you. But as Axio started to… well change things and go a bit nuts, I realized I was missing memories… I'm assuming you don't have that little side effect whenever you use it?"

"No, not really… I remember everything whenever I rewind things and haven't exactly had any issues with my memories, although…" I said trailing off as I thought about Hydramental and his knowledge of my real name. I was just about to bring him up when I saw Calypso shift in her seat and I decided to approach it a different way. "You said that you guys in the First Wave had your Hidden Powers activated the wrong way right, it's why you don't just talk normally right? Why is it not doing anything now, she's been talking this whole time."

At this Calypso and Christopher shared a look and I was sure I saw confusion there before they both looked back at me.

"It's because this is a Dead Zone right now. It was the only way we could risk bringing Christopher out given how obsessively Axio has been trying to hunt him down lately," Calypso explained, pulling an oddly familiar looking device out from the shelf behind her and setting it on the table.

"That friend of yours, BrainCraft? He really is rather brilliant. He had the designs for this thing almost perfect. He just didn't know the code that was necessary to make them work… whereas we had the opposite," Christopher said with an approving nod before he quickly turned and reached for a bag he had on the ground next to him. "In fact, please give these back to him. It'll give you guys what you need to build your own and that should be really useful with some of the stupidly destructive people out there. Though I did make a small modification to it to make the size a bit more variable. Not really helpful if you get yourself caught in the zone too and can't use your own powers."

"Shouldn't you have already realized that? You went into the room SnakeBite was being held in, your Action Bars should be disabled just like they had been then," Calypso said, though she still sounded a bit confused. It was my turn to let out a bit of a humorless laugh as I looked at the device. It had been something I had wanted to bring up to them, if only just to figure out what the hell might have happened. And sure, maybe I could have just told them, but maybe I was starting to get a bit of a flair for theatrics too.

I activated Center of the Universe, focusing on inanimate objects as I held a hand out. The small Dead Zone device shook for just a second, along with all of the books on the shelves on the walls nearby us before they all lurched toward me. Since the device had been the closest thing to me, it smacked into my hand and I disabled the ability before things could start assaulting me, though it did leave a rather large mess.

"My, uh… my powers actually still work in a Dead Zone… And I don't have to use my Action Bar any more either."

"Any… more? Can you… can you elaborate on that?" Christopher said, clearly choosing his words very clearly as his eyes shifted to the side and he looked over at Calypso.

Although it felt like we had gotten really off topic, I guess I also was okay with any topic that took us away from discussing my apparent death in an alternate timeline. I made a mental note to maybe not tell anyone when I saved them from a potential death if I could really avoid it as I cleared my throat. As I held the Dead Zone device in one of my hands, fidgeting with it just a bit, I explained everything that had happened a few days earlier.

"So, your powers just… reactivated out of nowhere? That shouldn't be possible, unless…" Christopher sat with a hand held to his chin as he listened intently and at some point Calypso actually took a pad to take notes on. Calypso seemed to perk up as he trailed off and I actually think she looked nearly as confused as I felt. "Agh… this is a risk…"

"Do you think he used-"

"Who else could have?" Christopher said, cutting her off as a look of realization seemed to pass over him. "Wait… that Codex friend of yours who originally sent us the letter… you told Calypso he wasn't any Augment but was some sort of human P.A.I. for you, right? Which is also technically something that shouldn't be possible but that's really not the point right now…"

"Uh, yeah. He can help manage a lot of stuff in the backend. When I had my Ability Bars still he could rearrange them or set up my equipment lineup, stuff like that, " I explained, feeling my confusion growing.

"Hmm… and when you use your Hidden Power, what happens to him? Does he keep his memories too?" Christopher asked and I immediately shook my head.

"Angie and Axio both do, but that's it… although Angie did say that she is missing what happened before I rewound things from the Dead Zone on that Pangolin. She thought it was because I had been disconnected from her at the time and she tries not to bring it up too much, but I'm pretty sure that bit of missing time has bothered her."

"Then it's possible…" Christopher said, his voice lowering as his eyes dropped back to the table and he trailed off. He seemed to be muttering to himself when Calypso let out a tired sigh, reached up and shook his shoulder.

"Earth to Christopher," she said and he shook his head in a bit of shock as he looked over at her with an apologetic smile.

"Sorry… it's possible Codex did something that he no longer remembers doing… that said, if he found it once…" Christopher said as he started to trail off again. He shook his head, apparently resolving himself to push forward before he looked at me. "This is dangerous information. It's the reason I went into hiding… Since your Acceptance Matrix is off, there's not necessarily a risk of your P.A.I. learning about it on accident and passing on the information to Axio… but if I tell you this and he finds out… I can't guarantee your safety… or anyone else's really."

"That's… should you actually tell me then?" I said, feeling my nerves biting at me. "If it's that dangerous that is…"

"I might not have if I hadn't realized what would happen… I brought you into all of this… put this on you… and didn't even think about the implications… just like when I started all of this years ago… I can't keep doing that and hoping things will work themselves out," Christopher explained with a shake of his head. "I thought hiding it on you would be temporary… not that it would give you the ability to use it…"

"That sounds… foreboding," I said with a nervous chuckle.

"It's called the Administration Key… I know, not very creative but since I was the only one who could use it, I didn't think it mattered," Christopher said, finally getting to the point.

"It's essentially the master copy of the code for the game… You can't change things at random or however you want, but there are certain elements you can tweak. It's how I added you to the game. I removed one player from the First Wave and added on to the Tenth. Even then, it only worked because you happened to match up with all the requirements I had set in place for Augmentation before the Array rose and Axio started to "randomly" make his selections. Without realizing that both my own and Axio's memories of the last few months had become corrupted, I added you to the wave… while at the same time Axio had seemingly lost his mind… He was supposed to finally have the answer to why he had come to us, Calypso confirmed that we had marked the date on our calendar based on predictions he had given us but instead… well I guess I don't have to explain to you what happened…"

"I unknowingly showed him the Key existed when I added you to the Wave and he jumped at it, giving himself more control over the Wave structure and how the game runs… He only lost access when I threw the Code into a folder on your Array and then vanished into my Safe House… he's been under the assumption that I have the code… which is why he has been trying to hunt me down."

"That's…" I said, my eyes going wide as Christopher finally stopped. "Should you have really told me that? What if I let something slip? Wouldn't it have been safer…"

"I thought it was… but if Codex was able to find and use it once… it's entirely possible it could happen again…" He reached up and pointed at the Dead Zone device still in my hand. "Build yourself one of those… use it and fill him in without your P.A.I. overhearing just in case… and then keep it to yourself. I can't force you not to go looking for it even if I wish I could, but you need to understand what might happen if you do try to use it… Axio will know the moment it happens… and since I no longer know for sure what he's going to do…"

I swallowed hard as I looked down at the device and then placed it on the table, looking back up and meeting Christopher's eyes.

"Okay… I can do that…" I said and he let out a slow, relieved sigh. "Now that we got the uh… super heavy stuff out of the way… think I can ask you a few more questions? Codex would kill me if I didn't… although he'd probably also demand I ask you for an autograph."

"Sure thing," Christopher said, a genuine smile passing over his face as the worry that had slowly gathered there dissipated. I wasn't positive, but I thought I saw that same bit of approving pride in his eyes that I had thought I saw earlier as he leaned back in his chair. "Go ahead and shoot, I don't have anywhere else to be right now."

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