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It turned out that Galaxy did, in fact, keep tabs on the Gifted they knew who had gone insane. It was just one of many services their mental health division provided to members, periodically sending someone without the Gift to visit the ill in their care facilities. It was a bit like the Red Cross but for crazy people. A very small, narrow group of crazy people.

There were very thorough records kept on each case and to my surprise they found fourteen cases in total where psychometrics known to be insane had recovered and left care. I’d thought that was impossible but apparently I was wrong. “It’s not common,” Mix said as he handed me the files on the people in question. “But it’s not unheard of either. It’s not something we tend to broadcast because people tend to get careless when dealing with potential mental health situations, thinking they’ll be one of the exceptions. Top minds have been trying to figure out what causes it but no luck so far.”

“If this can happen, why does everyone say it’s impossible?” I asked.

“Do they?” Mix countered. “Or do they just say no one they know has ever recovered? Those are two different things.”

They were, and he was right. It was still unsettling to know that something I’d taken for granted for so long was based on a totally erroneous understanding of what I’d been hearing. Still, I knew better now and there was all the information I’d needed with no fuss. It was almost too good to be true. Almost.

Fourteen names is still a lot of people and we needed to narrow it down. We started by eliminating anyone who didn’t specialize in psychological or neurological fields, as Vinny made it clear that was the secret sauce to making a therapy fugue work. That left us with five names. Two of them were active and accounted for already, it was possible they were involved in this case somehow but distance and timing made it unlikely – one was in the Arctic Circle, helping keep people sane, the other lived in Hawaii and hadn’t travelled enough to have offered the kind of hands on work necessary to program the software in a new type of fugue generator.

By the end of the first day we were down to only three names. It was almost too good to be true. Almost.

“Two of them recovered in the last six months,” Natalie said. “That puts them well inside the one year timeframe to work on the Backboard project. That just leaves us with one possibility.”

I was paging though the relevant files and handing the relevant pages to Hennesy. “But there’s a catch.”

“Of course there is,” Hennesy muttered. “It’d be too good to be true to just have the right guy drop into our laps, wouldn’t it?”

“None of these three have checked in with their handlers since the most recent two recovered,” I said, ignoring his griping. “Also, they’re all related. A father and his two daughters.”

“That can’t be a coincidence,” Hennesy said.

“We don’t think it is,” I said. “But we – meaning Galaxy in this case – apparently don’t track cases like theirs as a matter of course. I’ve reached out to Mix to see if the Constellations will order a check-in, but I don’t know how long that will take or even if they will agree to do it.”

“Why wouldn’t they?” Hennesy asked. “I thought Galaxy was offering us full cooperation in this case.”

“We’re offering all the investigative power we can muster,” I said. “But we’re still psychometrics. We value our privacy. I’d be hesitant to even ask for a check in if it wasn’t for how important this situation is.”

“Let’s hope your Constellations agree with you,” Hennesy grumbled. “I don’t want it to turn out I spent days chasing nothing.”

“Well, that’s one thing we can reassure you on,” I said. “I forgot to mention that all three of our missing psychometrics live in Arizona. The same state A.J. Jackson is from, and the same place where public filings show Project Backboard’s offices are.”

Hennesy eyed me for a moment then did a little psychometry of his own. “Let me guess. The Gifted who recovered first was the father, and you think he worked with Jackson to help his kids do the same.”

“It’s simple, straightforward and fits the facts,” I said.

“Nothing’s every that straightforward,” Hennesy said. “Let us put some feelers out on these people. We have connections Galaxy probably wouldn’t even think of.”

“You read my mind.”

Hennesy snorted and waved us out of his office.

“So are we waiting for results or does the Federal Government have somewhere else they’d like us to go today?” I asked as Natalie and I headed back towards her cubicle.

“I don’t know,” she replied. “Honestly I think anything specific to your skillset got farmed out to others when you didn’t show up on time. So I guess we’re waiting. I don’t know if you need to stay here or not.”

“Mix will call for me here so I might as well stick around.” Honestly I was just as interested in hanging around because Natalie was here and I did kind of enjoy her company. Going back to the hotel meant being alone or possibly with Aurora and after they day before I wasn’t really prepared for either one. “Any idea what kinds of resources the FBI will put into finding Helio and his girls?”

“It’s not the highest priority we have right now,” Natalie replied. “And it’s in another jurisdiction so just how seriously they’ll take the request is anyone’s guess. But I’d say we’ll know by tomorrow, if not sooner. What about Galaxy?”

“Mix told me someone left to check on them pretty much while we were talking. I’m expecting him to call any minute.” I dragged a chair over from an empty cubicle and sat down, putting my feet up on the edge of Natalie’s empty trash can. “It’s kind of amazing to me that someone would agree to help make this kind of mess just to get two people out of a catatonic state.”

Natalie hesitated in the middle of logging into her work station for whatever job she had been about to start on. “Really?”

“Well, I mean, I don’t have kids, but…”

“Neither do I but I do have parents.” Natalie gave me an incredulous look. “Do psychometrics really never visit each other in the hospital?”

I shrugged, suddenly very uncomfortable. “I can’t speak for all of us. My parents weren’t Gifted, so they had no issue with it. I’m sure it varies from family to family.”

“Armor, crazy isn’t catching. It doesn’t work like that.”

Slow breath in, slow breath out. There were parts of my life that I knew didn’t make sense to those without the gift. “Natalie, I know you’re not trying to be deliberately provocative so I’ll give you a pass. But don’t presume to tell me what is and what isn’t the mechanics of our minds. I’m sure you never thought a man could turn catatonic from just touching a body either.”

“Armor, they were family. How could they stay away from each other?”

“It’s not a question of how they were related or how close they are to each other. It’s a question of whether or not there was anything they could do for each other. Staying clear headed when you’re surrounded by madness isn’t simple. That’s probably what drove him to trying a fugue state in the first place.” I shuddered a bit, trying not to let the helplessness of my last trip to fugue land get at me. It may have been meant as a way to treat the ill but the memory of being stuck in my own head with no way out still gave me fits. Maybe that was part of how the treatment was intended to work. “The point is if you’re not a trained psychologist with the Gift – or, apparently, a mad scientist – you can’t visit them safely. And I’m not sure getting around that justifies making war on the entirety of the California coastline. Natalie, twice as many people died in hospitals because of the power failures resulting from this mess as he saved using his miracle technology. Maybe lack of empathy is the chink in my armor but I just can’t make that balance out in my mind.”

Natalie just shook her head and went back to her computer, working at who knows what. Listening to her disapproval rattle around in her subconscious was not the change of pace I had hoped for.