JO DIDN’T HAVE the notion of being able to sneak back into the Society. With only eight people total, any absence would no doubt be noticed. But she thought she could ease herself back, see people individually, perhaps even skim off a day or two from her nearly four-day-long adventure by letting her teammates’ minds play tricks by leaving them to wonder if someone else had merely seen her first.

No such luck.

If the door could be closed after being opened, Jo would’ve insisted to Wayne that he just do that instead. But he was already halfway through and Jo was being pulled alongside him.

They stepped into a full briefing room and all eyes were on them. Wayne cleared his throat, easing the Door closed behind him. Jo folded her arms over her chest defensively.

“Kind of you to finally join us.” Snow’s chilling voice cut through the tension first.

“Lens Louise,” Wayne muttered under his breath with a glance to Snow, before forcing some cheer into his voice. “What did we miss?”

She didn’t know what a “Lens Louise” was, but Wayne’s side-eye and tense tone was descriptive enough that she could infer it wasn’t the most polite thing to say about someone.

Snow tapped his fingers on the table, one of his eyes veiled by silver hair while the other stared them down with a steely gaze. Despite being seated, he managed to domineer over them like a judge on a parapet.

“Where were you?” Snow ignored Wayne’s question.

“Look. . .” Jo took a deep breath and braced herself. “It’s not his fault. I begged him to come with me and—”

“He still made the choice to do so of his own volition,” Snow interrupted.

“Listen, he was helping me,” she tried to explain.

“Helping you make changes in the world unrelated to the wish.” Snow’s hand curled into a fist, and for a brief second Jo thought he may slam it on the table. He didn’t, but only just.

“We kept the changes as minimal as possible,” Jo assured them all. No one would seem to meet her gaze. “I had to. I had to,” she repeated for emphasis. The dodgy glances, the side eyes, the unexpected sadness, the entirely expected disappointment. . . it wore her down quickly. “My wish was to save my friend. If I didn’t act, he was going to die.” So much for not really telling people what they were up to.

“Then you should have let it come to pass.”

Her eyes snapped back to Snow. “How can you say that?” she breathed, not knowing or caring if the statement was audible to anyone but herself. “You saw us that day in Texas. You saw him dead. If I hadn’t saved him, what did I even wish for to begin with?”

“You wished for a revised world. If the foolish decisions of your friend still get him killed, then perhaps he is meant to die.”

“Take that back!” Jo didn’t mean to shout, it just sort of happened. “You take that back!”

“Jo—” Wayne’s hands closed around her shoulders, holding her in place.

“Everyone but us will die. You must let them go and focus on your duty now.”

“My duty? How dare you. All I’ve wanted to do this entire time is have a duty, a purpose, and contribute,” she spat.

“Which you would’ve been able to do, had you been here.”

Jo stilled as Snow spoke, her chest heaving and shoulders pulling against Wayne’s hands. “What are you talking about?

“It was Pan’s idea, actually,” Eslar chimed in, likely the only person who could speak without being silenced by Snow. “I was experiencing difficulty lessening the Severity of Exchange on my own. I can cure the illness. But these doctors, they look to science, not magic. Something that cannot be explained is daunting, terrifying even. If the patient was cured magically, it would be written off as a miracle or anomaly, and the gap would not close enough for Snow to build a new reality and grant the wish.”

“I caught wind.” It was Pan’s turn to speak. “I remembered all your tapping away, such fantastic magic you had. I thought it could be of help, modify all that science data in someway, perhaps? A foundation for Eslar’s cure?” Pan’s words and tone were in dissonance. She spoke as if she didn’t know anything, but her overall aura said otherwise. “But I didn’t know where to find you, so I began asking around.”

Pan had outed her after all. Jo’s hands balled into a fist. She wouldn’t have actually punched the woman-child (as tempting as it may be), but she must’ve had a convincing enough expression for Wayne to think so, because he grabbed her wrist and whispered, “Don’t.”

“That was when we learned of what you did.” All eyes were back on Snow, including Jo’s.

“Yes, okay, I made a small modification. I made it so that my friend wouldn’t fail and die. I’m not sorry.”

“Because you do not understand.”

There was a sharp intake of air from Wayne, who’d clearly put together something she couldn’t yet see. “The Severity of Exchange.”

Snow gave the other man a solemn nod. “You have widened the Severity of Exchange with your actions.”

“That’s not possible.” Jo shook her head. “I was careful, I didn’t even do all that much—”

“You saw that the most extensive cyber-currency bank collapsed, sending markets and businesses into free-fall.”

“No, Yuu shouldn’t have even—”

“This is not your world!” Snow’s voice rose a fraction. “People are different, time-lines are different, even what looks similar is not the same. Understand that, Josephina.” He used her full name, like she was some toddler who’d spoken out of turn.

“He did it then?” Somewhere between her implanting the virus, and coming back, Yuusuke must’ve hit the bank with his first probing attack. Had he really moved so quickly? She’d done her job a little too well—or Snow was right, and everything was just. . . different.

“But the wish is only one man,” she protested weakly. Even if she had a lot to feel guilty about, she still didn’t see how it related to the wish.

“One man who had most of his savings in credits.”

Her heartbeat was in her ears. “But. . . he has insurance. He’s in Canada, after all. They have to take care of him there. It’s part of the People’s Promise of the late 1990s.” Jo remembered reading about it once in a class that covered the health crisis happening in old America at the same time.

“He was paying extra for a research hospital. A hospital he can no longer afford out-of-pocket. He will be transferred within the week to standard care, where he will die, far from the nurse who made the wish.”

“You don’t know that,” she objected on instinct. It was unfathomable how large the ripples had become: she’d only meant to help Yuusuke take down the Black Bank.

“But I do. I can see it in the Severity of Exchange.”

Jo hung her head, searching for options. She took a breath and straightened her back. “Okay, I messed up, I’m sorry.” No one seemed to have any interest in her apology. Not that she blamed them, of course. “But I’ll fix it.” She looked to Eslar, hoping he’d save her from the grave-shaped hole she’d dug without knowing. “I can fix it. We just have to make the wish happen before he’s transferred, right?”

“That’s only three days from now,” Eslar said uncertainly.

“Plenty of time!” Jo may have sold her reassurance a little too hard. Her laugh was strained and thin. “Really, plenty. If I can take down the Black Bank in less than a week with my magic, I can falsify some hospital and research records. It’ll be simple, I’ll just—”

“How much time do you have left?” Snow interrupted her again.

Jo looked down at her watch, and her heart sank. “Just over an hour. . .”

“Not enough.”

“I promise you, it is.” She fished around in her pocket for the USB and pulled it out, showing it to everyone. “I can code here, and use this to bring my scripts to the real world. I just have to hit ‘run’ and make sure nothing goes wrong. It worked for the Black Bank and it’d work for this. You told me to learn my magic, so I did, and this is how I can use it best.”

“And if it doesn’t work, we’re left stranded.” Snow shook his head. “We must look for another way.”

“It will work,” she insisted.

“You have done enough.”

“Let me help you,” Jo pleaded, looking between Snow and Eslar. “I can do this, I promise, believe me.”

“We shall continue thinking of a way without you,” Snow spoke with a heavy note of finality. “As we were doing before you decided to arrive. Therefore, you are no longer needed for this discussion.”

“Are you kicking me out?” Jo balked.

“I was giving you the opportunity to leave yourself, before I had to say it outright.”

Jo opened her mouth to protest, but Wayne cut her off. “Let’s make tracks, doll.”

Before she could say anything further, Wayne had already pushed her from the room. Jo seethed silently halfway down the hall to the Four-Way, but burst when she could take it no longer.

“Who does he think he is?”

Wayne made a hushing noise at her.

“Oh let them hear, I don’t care.” She threw a rude gesture back at the doors.

“We messed up.” He buried his hands in his pockets, looking like a freshly scolded child.

“I know we did!” Jo sighed, lowering her voice. “I’m sorry. I’m not angry at you. I can’t be. All you did was help me and got in trouble for it.”

He didn’t contest the fact.

“I get it, we made an error. . . But I can still help. You’ve seen me work, Wayne. You know an hour and three days is plenty of time.”

“I’m not—”

“Do you or don’t you?” She stopped him by grabbing his wrist and they both hovered in the Four-Way.

“I do.”

A smile cracked through her anger. At the very least, he seemed to believe in her. “Thank you.”

“You’re wel—”

“Now, tell Eslar.” She didn’t want him accepting her thanks; she wanted action.

“What?” He seemed startled by her sudden demand.

“Tell Eslar about my magic, what I can do. Tell him what you saw and tell him I can do this. Snow is. . . how did you put it? A bastard?”

“I don’t think I ever said that.”

“You’re right, I just did.” Jo grinned conspiratorially. Even if Snow was right in reprimanding her, that didn’t make it feel good, and anger made Jo petty—even if her anger was mostly inward facing. “Talk to Eslar, tell him, make him let me help.”

Wayne’s brow furrowed and he squinted slightly. Jo braced herself for an outright refusal. He shook his head and her heart sank with his eyes as they turned to the floor. But like a phoenix, they rose again. “Okay, dollface, cheer up. I’ll do what I can.”

“Thank you!” Jo threw her arms around his neck. “I can never pay you back for all of this, but thank you.”

He gave her a friendly squeeze and then pulled away, starting toward the rooms. “No promises though.”

“I know,” Jo assured him. But she wasn’t worried. Once Eslar knew of her magic, there wasn’t any way he’d still choose to go it alone. “Thanks again.”

“You got it.” Wayne gave her a tired looking grin, and a little wink. “We’re teammates after all. I’d do anything for this team.” He disappeared into his room, leaving Jo standing before her door.

She hoped he was being sincere. . . because for the second time since she’d arrived in the Society, her redemption rested squarely on Wayne’s shoulders.