“You know how I said my situation was kind of complicated?” I said slowly, trying to ignore the fight at the other end of the hallway. Pam wandered over to the girl and quickly checked on her condition. Once she was convinced the girl was fine, she took a defensive position at the end of the hallway, right next to Angelica.

  Even though her eyes were on the hallway, I could tell she was listening to every word Olivia and I said.

  “Yesss,” Olivia replied.

  “And you remember how I said that I never had any friends my age since I was six?” I continued.

  “Yesss,” Olivia repeated, her eyebrows slowly raising in interest.

  “Well, in order to compensate for the fact that I couldn’t make any friends, I made some friends, as in imaginary ones. They helped me deal with my loneliness as a kid,” I explained. “I always thought they were just my way of coping with my situation, but in both the market and here…”

  Instead of finishing my sentence, I gestured towards the hallway behind her.

  Olivia frowned. She turned and looked at the hallway for a couple of seconds, then whipped back around, her eyes wide. “You’re telling me your imaginary friends are ripping apart those invaders? Are you shitting me?”

  “I’m as surprised as you are!” I insisted. “I always thought they were just figments of my imagination. They’ve never been able to interact with anything until the market!”

  Hairy was stomping around the far end of the hallway, occasionally stooping down to pound a particularly thick group of centipedes, but mostly just stepping on the invaders.

  “Trust me,” I sighed, “they tried.”

  “Well then… That’s… something,” Olivia muttered as she slowly turned back towards the hallway. The two of us stood there for a minute, staring at the carnage.

  “How many friends do you have?” she finally asked.

  “Right now? Three. Hairy the bull, Angelica the Jellyfish, and Tyberius the mechanical… thing,” I explained quietly. “You can’t see them?”

  “No? Should I be able to?” Olivia asked, glancing over at me.

  “I don’t know!” I exclaimed. “This is all new to me! I honestly thought what happened in the market was a panic-fueled hallucination, something my brain cooked up to help me deal with the situation. Who in their right mind would believe their imaginary friends would be able to rip apart extradimensional entities? I have no idea what’s normal anymore!”

  The situation was really starting to get to me. I’d just revealed that I’d been playing with imaginary friends since I was six to the first friend I’d made in ten years, and on top of that, I had to confront the reality that what happened in the market was real. It was too much.

  The world began to spin, and it was getting hard for me to breathe. I clutched at my collar, trying to tear it open so I could get some air.

  Someone grabbed my hands.

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  “Hey, hey, hey, it's okay, everything is going to be okay,” Olivia whispered kindly. My vision was getting dim, and I couldn’t see her. “You need to calm down, okay? Take deep breaths, alright? Follow my lead, in, and out.”

  I did exactly as she instructed, filling my lungs before letting out a deep breath. The dizziness and darkness receded slightly.

  “Good, keep doing that. I’m going to lead you to a chair; you shouldn’t be standing right now. Just follow me, alright?”

  I nodded slightly and continued breathing. Breathing was important.

  Olivia led me across the room to a small waiting area and slowly lowered me into a chair. The good news was that I didn’t feel like I was going to pass out anymore; the bad news was that with Olivia crouched right in front of me, I was probably going to be forced to confront my problems.

  “Hey, are you okay?” Olivia asked quietly.

  “No, how could I be okay? My life is falling apart,” I muttered, tears in the corner of my eyes. I looked at the ground; it was easier than looking her in the face. “Just a week ago, I thought I was just a normal, slightly isolated girl. And since then, I’ve encountered two Ruptures, finding out the imaginary friends I’ve spent most of my life with weren’t exactly what I thought, and lost the first friend I made in years!”

  Olivia frowned. “What are you talking about? Why wouldn’t I want to be your friend?”

  “Because no one wants me around, and I just revealed I’m a teenage loser that still has imaginary friends!” I cried.

  “Hey, hey, hey… Stop,” Olivia whispered as she gently hugged me. “You’re not a loser. You spent ten years isolated because your powers made all your classmates intensely uncomfortable, and those imaginary friends are part of your power. I wouldn’t abandon you over that! Besides, your friends not only saved our lives, but also the life of that little girl. That’s amazing!”

  “Really?” I blubbered.

  “Really,” she confirmed, squeezing me tighter. We stayed like that for several more seconds, until I started to calm down. Once I stopped crying, she pulled back and looked me in the face. “Better?”

  “Better,” I confirmed, as I clumsily wiped at my eye with my hands. Olivia leaned over and grabbed the box of tissues off a nearby end table and offered it to me. I took a couple to dab at my eyes. “Thanks.”

  “I’m glad we got that out of the way, and you calmed down. I can’t believe you thought I’d abandon you over something stupid like having imaginary friends. Who do you take me for?” she grumbled.

  “I’m sorry, I’m not exactly good with people. I’m more of a ‘stuff all my emotions deep inside and avoid dealing with them’ sort of person. You’re the first person I’ve gotten close to, besides my mom, in years,” I admitted. “Thank you for everything.”

  “It’s no big deal,” Olivia said as she looked away, blushing slightly at the compliment. Cute. After a moment, she turned back and cleared her throat. “Well, now that you’re feeling better, we should probably get back to the hallway. It’s probably a bad idea for us to ignore the literal breach in reality, a couple of dozen meters away.”

  My eyes widened slightly at the reminder.

  “Right…” I muttered, pushing myself unsteadily to my feet, once Olivia gave me some space. “It would have been embarrassing if I had been devoured by extradimensional centipedes because I suffered a panic attack.”

  “Look at the bright side, there are far more embarrassing ways to die,” Olivia replied. “It’s not like you drowned in a puddle or something.”

  I chuckled lightly before falling into step next to her as we quickly made our way back to the hallway. Pam and Angelica were still standing guard, and it looked like the girl had recovered from her experience. Sort of.

  She was sitting in the corner, face buried in her knees, hands clamped tightly over her ears. The kid looked like an early bloomer, no older than eight. She probably barely understood what was happening, or why. Most Empowered only experienced five or six Ruptures in their lives, for it to happen so early? Bad luck.

  I nodded subtly to Angelica before approaching Pam.

  “You okay now, kid? You know, you choose one hell of a place for a panic attack,” Pam said without looking away from the hallway.

  “I’m aware… and yeah, I’m fine now. How are things here?” I replied.

  “Surprisingly stable,” the woman grunted. “That power of yours is something. I’ve never seen a Rupture get contained so quickly, and invaders destroyed so thoroughly before. Glad you were here.”

  “Yeah, well, that makes one of us,” I muttered under my breath. “How much longer do you think it’ll be active?”

  “It’s a small one, so three or four more…” the portal flickered, interrupting the woman. The mechanical centipedes all screeched at once and rushed back to the throbbing tear in reality. Some made it back, but after a couple of seconds the aperture slammed closed, trapping most of the monsters on this side.

  Just like at Coopers the remaining creatures immediately rolled up and died, their outer casing dissolved revealing a sickening mix of mechanics and guts for a few seconds, before even their squishy cores evaporated.

  The entire process was so fast, taking only five or six seconds from the time the portal started flickering to slamming close, and another seven or eight for all the creatures to disappear.

  Just like that, the emergency was over. The alarms shut off, and my watch changed to: ‘Situation stable, please standby while we perform a security sweep.’ The message scrolled by twice, then flipped to another message, which caused me to burst out laughing.

  “What? What’s so funny?” Olivia asked, concerned by my sudden change.

  I turned my tracking device towards her. “We’re late for orientation.”

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