After we reunited with the twins, we all headed back to the station together. Thanks to our comms setup, Abe and Ant had heard the whole conversation, and the only thing they wanted to be filled in on was details of what the suit looked like. The five of us went over how we thought the meeting had gone as we retraced our steps through the town, and everyone seemed to be of a similar mind, including Jace.

Mr. Montague appeared to be legit.

By the time we had reached Bridgeton Main Station, we had pretty much discussed all angles that any of us could think of, based on the brief conversation, and were just about ready to part ways, when we realized that the barriers had been closed. The station had been shut down for maintenance this evening. All of us had apparently failed to notice the warning sign earlier, which was lit up on the station’s notice screen.

Which meant we had to walk to the next nearest station, which was about half an hour away, on the other side of Bridgeton.

Which presented another annoying opportunity for my nostalgia to resurface.

I’d been able to distract myself pretty well since we left the station, thanks to the intrigue of the meeting, but as we set off on another walk, delving deeper into the town, we began to pass places that were more familiar to me—from Henry’s and my favorite ice cream shop, to a theater where we’d watched our first movie together—and I found myself falling silent again, needing to be in my own space as I grappled with the same damn feelings that rematerialized from earlier, while my colleagues continued to chat around me.

Henry’s gone, I told myself firmly. He’s not coming back. He’s probably even met another girl by now.

And I don’t need another guy in my life. Not now. Probably not for a long time. I don’t have room for him. He’ll just bring in his socks and underwear and scatter them over my floor. And I don’t have time to pick them up.

That was the thing about nostalgia, I needed to remind myself. It could be both a gift and a curse. It made you only remember the good things about people and places of the past, glossing over the not-so-good as if they had never existed. Everything was rainbows and unicorns, kisses against the sunset and lovemaking on the beach.

Which was great when you wanted to look back on your life, in your old age, and remind yourself of all the nice times you’d lived through.

But it wasn’t so great when you were trying to move on from something. It dragged you back, reminding you of what you were missing out on, infecting you with feelings that were irrational, and yet near impossible to shake. Because somehow, it made you believe that you could experience them again, without all the bad stuff that was fundamentally part of the package we called life.

The reality was, once you got past the starry-eyed first-date and honeymoon phase, relationships were hard work. And you had to really, really be sure about your partner before you ventured into one, if you wanted to stand any chance of coming out the other end of it unscathed.

I exhaled, shaking my head and running a hand down my face.

As soon as I got out of this town, I knew all this stuff would go away, and I could be back to normal in a day or two. So I just had to hold out a little bit longer, until we reached the next station.

My silence attracted Jace’s notice once again, however, and, after about ten minutes of me hanging back, he retreated from the conversation with Jackie and the twins to walk by me, causing my breath to hitch involuntarily.

I liked the guy, but I really didn’t need him in close proximity right now. Then again, that was my exact problem. I liked him. I friggin’ liked him.

“You okay?” he asked, casting me a sidelong glance.

I forced a smile, keeping my eyes on the path ahead. “Yeah.”

“Okay. You just seemed pretty quiet all of a sudden.”

I pressed my lips together. “Mm-hm. This place just holds some memories for me, is all.”

“The good kind, I hope,” he remarked.

I shrugged, wanting to keep playing it cool, in the hope that I could fake it till I made it, that my external mood would infect my actual inner state. “Think high school summer romances.”

His eyebrows rose. “Sounds scandalous.”

I laughed, in spite of how close his remark came to the truth. “Yeah,” I replied, shooting him a look. “Maybe I am the scandalous type.”

A smile tugged at his slightly uneven lips. “I’d never have guessed.”

“Then you still know very little about me, Mr. X,” I replied primly, switching my gaze back ahead, as I was well aware by now what those little dimples at the edges of his mouth could do to me.

“Clearly…” he said.

As we rounded a corner, passing a music shop Henry and I had hung out in a few times, I felt a sudden twinge of guilt and abruptly felt the urge to add, “You do know my first name, though.”

Jace looked at me in surprise, raising an eyebrow. “Robin?” he mouthed, and I nodded. “Your real first name?”

“Mm-hm.”

He frowned. “Oh. Okay.”

I could tell he was wondering why I’d suddenly decided to tell him, and to be honest, I wasn’t sure either. The fact that I was feeling a bit jumpy right now, in my attempt to force confidence and chill in front of him, might have had something to do with it, causing me to overcompensate. Because honestly, getting closer to him by sharing personal information was the last thing I needed to do.

And yet, I just felt it was fair to him. As a friend. It had been playing on the back of my mind for a while, ever since I had learned his full real name, because it didn’t sit right with me that the balance was tipped completely on his side. I somehow felt more comfortable in our professional relationship knowing he knew at least something more about me.

Besides, he was already calling me Robin, so it hardly felt like a huge step.

“Thanks, I guess,” he said after a moment, still eyeing me curiously. “I appreciate the trust. Though you didn’t have to tell me.”

“I know,” I replied. “It just seemed fair.”

“Okay.” He nodded slowly, and then returned his eyes to the sidewalk ahead. “Well, I suppose I have it easier than you, not needing to remember to switch your name in public.”

I chuckled. “Yup.”

“Oh, and speaking of names,” he added. “On a different note: I haven’t heard back from any of my contacts yet with an affirmative about the archives. And I know that the community response hasn’t exactly been great, but I’m still hopeful someone will come back with something.”

“Okay,” I replied, grateful for the change of subject, but also feeling a throb of disappointment. I hadn’t really expected him to come back with an answer so quickly, though, as he had only put out the word last night. And I appreciated him taking this so seriously.

His statement also reminded me of the developments on OH+ that were supposed to have taken place today, which would finally make it easier for us to begin serious action planning.

And with that to focus my mind on, now I couldn’t get home soon enough.

I managed to keep thoughts of Jace mostly at bay on my journey home, with my brain anticipating the new portal (leaving Bridgeton helped with that, though I knew it would take at least a day or so for the nostalgia to fully wear off), and on reaching my cabin, I flung myself onto the sofa with my tablet before even getting any food or water. I logged on to OH+ and was thrilled to see that the changes had been made as planned. There had been little tweaks implemented all over the site to make it run more smoothly and intuitively, but the one that caught my eye was the most important one: a poll module right above the discussion forum.

I navigated into it and saw that, to my surprise, it was completely empty of submissions. There was a “new submission” button right there, clearly visible for all to see, and I’d thought that people would be all over this feature—eager to begin posting suggestions for our next move and taking votes.

And then I saw a pop-up notice on one side that explained how the poll worked:

“Enter a succinct description of how you believe we could begin taking action as a group. Your idea will go through a moderating period, then be reviewed by our administrators, to ensure that it is within the realm of reason, and then each submission will be sent out via private message to each member of the group. They will have an option to select yes or no. At the end of this process, submissions will appear within the poll area, and in this way we will see which ideas are the most popular, and are worthy of further discussion.

Please be patient as we go through this process. It may take several days for a submission to show up. And please do vote on all ideas. Every voice matters.

Submission deadline is this Saturday for the first pilot mission, so be sure to send us your idea by then if you have one. After the winning idea has been chosen, focused discussion will start.

Yours,

The admin team.”

I finished reading and immediately checked my inbox, but no new messages had come through yet, so I guessed whatever submissions they’d received so far were still in processing. The admins had been extra busy recently, after all, not just with working on this new portal while maintaining the main OH network, but also on the in-person groundwork the team was doing.

That didn’t mean I was going to wait to get my suggestion in.

I set down my pad, thinking. This seemed like a pretty logical way to go about this. Now I just needed to figure out what I wanted to submit. I’d thought about it some before, and figured that whatever we did first should be something that painted us in a positive light before the public, something that inspired trust and respect, and showed we were not only good guys, but motivated and organized. A force to be reckoned with. But how could we do that? It was what I had to begin hashing out now. I needed to come up with a solid idea, or at least an example, that could be a starting point for discussion.

I closed my eyes, and was just falling into concentration when my phone rang, startling me. I scrambled to pick it up and saw that it was an unidentified caller.

“Hello?” I said, answering it.

“Hi, Robin, this is Gabby,” the girl’s voice crackled through at the other end of the line.

“Oh,” I replied, surprised. “Hey, Gabby! How are you doing?”

“Okay, thanks. Hope I’m not disturbing you?”

“No, it’s okay. I just got home.”

“Okay. I guess you already logged in to the portal and saw the changes?”

I looked back to my screen. “Yeah. In fact, I’m just thinking about what to submit now under the poll section. Have you submitted anything yet?” I wondered.

She sighed. “No. I’ve just been thinking about it, too… You know that trafficking ring I’ve been trying to hack? I still haven’t managed to crack it, but imagine if everyone on this platform put their minds together on a way to get in. We could bust it in no time. I know it’s not directly related to OH’s main objective of ending the CRAS, but it’s just really been bugging me. Somebody has to do something about those monsters.”

I paused, an idea hitting me hard and fast. I hadn’t thought of that site, per se, but I suddenly realized how it could cross over to my line of thinking. Start with something good, and possibly unrelated to our main agenda, to begin inserting ourselves into the public’s consciousness.

“You’re right, Gabby,” I said slowly, the cogs beginning to whir in my brain. “Even regardless of what we’re trying to achieve here, something has to be done about that site.”

I’d bet we had enough techy minds to hack their system within a day or two, maybe even a few hours, if we joined together. And if we went about this right, we could end up killing two birds with one stone.

“I’m so glad you agree!” Gabby replied, sounding excited. “I was thinking it could be a great first exercise in working together, even leaving aside the kids we would have helped.”

“Is that why you called, by the way?” I asked. “To share your idea with me?” I was eager to get back to full concentration, now that, thanks to her interruption, the first inkling of a solid plan was beginning to form in my mind. But I didn’t want to cut her out.

“Um, yeah,” Gabby said. “And to give you an update on how I was doing with the site, since you asked. Also, I figured I’d see how you were doing with all of your other visitations.”

“They’ve been going pretty well so far, actually,” I replied. “Mr. X just has a couple more on his list, and then we should be ready to close the portal, to begin working on an actual mission. Apparently, all admins should be done by this Friday.”

“That’s exciting!”

“Yes, it is,” I murmured, drifting back into my musings. “Well, I’m gonna work on a submission now,” I said after a pause. “You’ve given me a good way to pitch something that I’ve already been mulling over, and I’m actually thinking we could submit a pitch jointly. How about I send it over to you for feedback once I’ve hashed it out?”

“Oh, sure! That would be awesome, because I wasn’t really sure how to word the idea.”

“Okay, keep an eye on your inbox.”

“Will do! Bye-bye!”

I ended the call, then picked my tablet back up and began to compose the submission. There was a limit on words, so I had to be concise, but after about an hour of thinking and rewording, I finally sent it off to Gabby. She got back to me within five minutes with a “YES, THIS IS PERFECT!” and a string of thumbs-up emojis, so I went ahead and hit submit, signing it with both of our names.

I was pretty happy with the end result, but time would tell whether others thought the same. For now all we could do was wait.