Aftermath: 23 - The Garland of the War (2027)

Newt holds out his hand because in for a penny, in for imperious-dick mode.

Chapter warnings: Realistic depictions of neurological, physical, and bureaucratic trauma. War. Grief. Death. Mental illness. Regular illness.

Text iteration: Witching hour.

Additional notes: None.

2027 (Twenty-three – The Garland of the War)

Spring has officially arrived. The Northern Hemisphere is on the summer side of the Vernal Equinox. Little flowers are bursting intrepidly out of the ground. Trees are ready to leaf themselves out.

And Newt? Probably in the clear, from an upper-respiratory standpoint. He still has the stupid cough from his last viral takedown, but it’s fading. Charu has joined his lab. Sam Gordon likes his R01, borderline sexually. The R01 is submitted! On time, even! Things are looking up. 

If Newt can wrest a good nine months out of every twelve on a reliable basis? He can totally live with that. 

On this delightfully average partly-cloudy morning, Newt leans against Amy’s lab bench, newest rotator, off sync from the usual crowd. He’s trying to understand her program structure—how the MD thing fits around the PhD—and, like, why anyone would do both? Ew. Probably she should just do science. He won’t tell her that yet though. He’ll wait until she joins. She will, he’s pretty sure, because Jake is exerting maximum charm. And as Jake goes, so goes the Geiszler lab. Every time Newt talks to him about it, Jake is all up in arms about how great she is. 

Hmm. Yeah. Really up in arms. Suspiciously up in arms.

Newt gets it; she’s got a tack-like sharpness, steadily applied. It doesn’t hurt that she’s pretty in that Lightcap way. Tall, blonde, clear eyes, perfect teeth. Newt had thought it might bother him, but it doesn’t. She’s totally different. There’s nothing of the late, great Cait-Science in the way she carries herself. All to the good. 

As they talk, Newt rips a piece of aluminum foil from the roll at her bench, makes a strategic tear, then wraps it neatly around a light-sensitive buffer. Not too much foil, not too little, the exact perfect amount for a tape-less wrap. He’s still got it. 

“That should be covered?” Amy asks, breaking her previous train of thought. 

“Myeah,” Newt says.

“Ugh, sorry, I didn’t realize.” She looks like she’s contemplating a dramatic self-flagellation-fest she might pencil into her calendar for later this evening. “I’ll remake it.”

Newt shrugs. “Meh. Not strictly necessary but probably not a bad idea depending on how long it’s been exposed to ambient light. Don’t worry about it. Are you worried? You look worried.”

“I have an anxiety disorder,” Amy tells him, half a joke, the other half definitely not a joke. 

Newt grins. “Join the club.”

Totally normal day! 

Then it gets weird.

“Anyway,” Newt says, his brain agreeing, finally, to sort through what’s been coming out of her mouth, “two years medical school, you’ve done one year so far, you rotate in the summer between years one and two but for only six weeks. Right now it’s not summer, but you want to start early to make the most out of your rotation, which will be the first of a definite two, and then you can opt for a third if—” he stops. 

He stops because Amy’s looking at someone standing behind him. 

Newt turns, cocks his head, and takes in the newcomer. Tall, older, maybe early seventies? Wearing a well-cut suit. Hardcore cheekbones. Is that why Newt’s brain is trying to make the guy into Hermann? He’s not Hermann though. Obviously. Why is his brain doing that?

Ohhhhh, Newt realizes in slow motion. Hermann’s father. Abruptly, he, too, finds himself considering dramatic self-flagellation as a post-work pre-dinner activity. Geiszler Lab, he thinks. For the Anxiety Disordered. Newt has put a moratorium on lab T-shirts until at least 2029. Or three R01s. Whichever comes first. 

In the future? Can we be faster with these things, please? He requests this of his brain.

His brain, mostly stalled out with its nervous grinding and finding, offers Lars Gottlieb a hello in hybrid German-English. Definitely not a real word. Also stupid, because Newt has met Lars Gottlieb. Has, in fact, stayed at his picturesque Bavarian Manor House. They’ve exchanged about seventy words total, but enough for Newt to know the man SPEAKS ENGLISH.

A bay away and visible through shelves only partially obscured by bottles, Jake snaps his laptop shut, stands, and starts walking toward them. This is probably because Newt seems taken aback and is fusing languages. A Jake Intervention is the last thing Newt needs right now, but he’s getting one, for sure. 

“I’m sorry to disturb you, Dr. Geiszler,” Lars Gottlieb says. “But I wonder if I might take you to lunch.”

That request is about six sigmas from the mean. Where’s Hermann in all of this? Uninvolved, apparently. Lars Gottlieb wants to take him, Newton Geiszler, to lunch? 

Good God, why? Newt’s brain asks, in eminently Gottliebian style.

“No.” Jake rounds the end of the bench, entering Amy’s bay.

Lars Gottlieb looks at Jake, puzzled.

“Jake?” Amy says, clearly alarmed, coming to stand right next to Newt.

What?

Jake is standing between Newt and Hermann’s father, Amy looks like she’s steeling herself to take a bullet, and Charu—half the lab away, standing near the door to the hall, is watching them and—calling someone. Who? Ping stands in front of Charu, shielding her from view, Daniel stops loading the plate reader for no reason Newt can see, and walks toward the hall.

They’re frightened, Newt realizes. And also—coordinated. They have a plan of some kind.

Uh oh.

Newt has less than three seconds before this escalates out of his control and his lab somehow gets Lars Gottlieb detained by UC Berkeley Campus Security, at a minimum, because they think he’s a nefarious authority figure bent on abducting their PI. 

“Charu.” Newt digs down and comes up with his most powerful tone, the one that stops enterprising junior scientists in their tracks right before they scalpel their way into a lethal part of a xenobiological sample. 

Everyone freezes. Especially Charu.

“Come here,” Newt says, still in full-on Science Commander Mode. “Do NOT hang up your phone.” 

She comes, phone in hand, clearly terrified, probably because Newt has never spoken to her in that tone before. Ideally, he’ll never do so again. Ping flanks Charu. Jake looks pissed and anxious. Amy looks—huh. Amy has a surprisingly good poker face. Lars Gottlieb mostly looks confused about what’s happening, which is probably the best Newt can really hope for right now,

Newt holds out his hand because in for a penny, in for imperious-dick mode.

“Sam Gordon,” Charu whispers, handing over her phone.

“Sam,” Newt says.

“Newt! What the hell is going on? Are you okay?”

“I’m fine.” Newt announces, pointedly. “My lab seems to think I’m in danger of being abducted by the Pan Pacific Defense Corps. They need to calm down. My father in law is trying to take me to lunch. Why is Charu calling you?”

Newt’s pronouncement has an immediate effect on everyone. Lars Gottlieb rolls his eyes in a gesture creepily reminiscent of Hermann as Jake and Charu immediately start apologizing—Jake to Hermann’s father, Charu to Newt. Ping turns right around and darts after Daniel, presumably to abort whatever he’s up to. Amy exhales a shuddery breath and steps away from him, to lean against her own lab bench.

“Er,” Sam Gordon says. “It’s complicated. You’re sure ‘lunch’ is really lunch?”

“Yes,” Newt says.

“Okay, well, great! Have fun,” Sam Gordon says, full of enthusiasm, then ends the call.

“He hung up on me,” Newt says, staring incredulously at Charu’s phone. “He hung up on me?”

“Sorry,” Charu whispers, taking her phone back. “Sorry, Newt.”

“Okay,” Newt says, voice projecting. “Um, we need to have a lab meeting about whatever it was that just happened here,” He realizes he’s gesticulating a little too wildly. Dials it back. “Later. Three o’clock. After lunch. Spread the word. Everyone needs to be there. Everyone.” He turns to Hermann’s father. “I am so sorry,” he tells Lars. “Let’s go. Should we go?”

“Perhaps your young protégé here would like to accompany us?” Lars suggests, looking at Jake.

“Er, no, I need to finish my plasmid prep and then find a hole to die in,” Jake informs them.

Newt shakes his head at Jake, but claps him on the shoulder on their way out.

They swing by Newt’s office, he grabs his coat, and they set out toward a small café that’s a fifteen-minute walk from the neurosciences building. 

Newt is rattled. He just is. Because of his lab’s behavior and because of Lars Gottlieb’s Very Surprise Lunch Visit. He tries to shelve that for now and do a semi-reasonable impression of a tour guide. It works mostly, but his brain is churning away on some of its favorite themes.

Is it possible he’s going to get some kind of a stay-away-from-my-least-favorite-child talk?

That would suck deeply and also be a little late in coming.

Is this actually some kind of we-need-your-brain-again soft sell?

Not impossible.

The combination of recent lab mutiny, cold air, anxiety, walking, and Newt’s most recent run in with pneumonia are starting to become noticeable. He’s getting worse at talking and walking. Hermann’s father seems disinclined to fill Newt’s irregular silences. But then—

“Let’s stop for a bit, shall we?” Lars takes a seat on a nearby bench, not offering Newt a choice about it. #yay. 

They sit under skeletonized trees. Newt pulls his jacket around himself tightly, then slips his inhaler out of his pocket, shakes it up, and albuterols himself. Subtly. Twice. It helps. Good thing he’d grabbed his coat. 

“I understand you’ve had multiple run-ins with Kaiju Blue,” Lars says, casual-small-talk style. Newt would like to pretend he’s a normal academic for days at a time before someone reminds him how weird his life has been. He’s getting there.

“Well. Really just.” Okay, fine, shorter sentences. “The one time.” He saves up some air. “The second time doesn’t count, because it was a.” Damn it. He shrugs, which saves it kinda. “Reactivation in the presence of a—” Newt makes a what’s-the-word gesture that probably does not fool Dr. Gottlieb Senior, “small molecule catalyst.”

“Ah.” Lars seems unimpressed with this distinction. “Seems a bit like splitting hairs, don’t you think?”

Newt can’t get over it. He can’t. They’re so similar. He smiles, shrugs, then makes some real progress paying down the oxygen debt he’s been accruing. 

More awkward silence. 

“Your lab seems particularly devoted to you,” Lars observes. 

“They’re out. Of control,” Newt agrees. “They’re getting a lecture.”

“Perhaps they simply need some education regarding acceptable persons in suits,” Lars suggests. 

“That too. They’d have been a lot friendlier. Had they known. You were the one who got me out of Hong Kong.”

“That,” Lars says quietly, “was my son.”

“True,” Newt replies, his tone going cool. Feeling defensive. Of course it was your son, he thinks, an unmistakably Gottliebian cast to his thoughts.

But. But but but, Newt does not equal Hermann. Newt is not going to get stressed. Newt is not going to borrow even ONE of Hermann’s multiple father-hates-me pathways. This? Is not Newt’s father. Newt’s father is a guy he’s met about three times and probably couldn’t easily pick out of a lineup. “I was given to understand,” Newt says, taking an extra-long air break, “you had something to do with allowing the process to go to completion.”

“Perhaps I did,” Lars replies, like he’s unlacing himself on purpose. Probably, he’s trying not to pick a fight. Smart. “I’ve followed your career for quite some time, you know. Since you two began corresponding.” He pauses, looking across the campus, taking in the academic vista. “I was curious about you. The advice you were giving him. Your motives.”

Ummm. Newt’s motives?

The guy must see something alarming on Newt’s face because he holds up a hand, shakes his head, and smiles. Huh. Less like Hermann. “I was amused to find you were younger than he was. That changed things. Don’t misunderstand me, Dr. Geiszler, I’ve been an admirer of yours for many years. I was the one who arranged your extraction from Manila, and pointed out your existence to Caitlin Lightcap.”

“Oh, er,” Newt says, reshuffling multiple decks of cards in his head. “Well, thank you. Again.”

“You are quite welcome.”

“Speaking of your son,” Newt says, doing better with his prosody all the time, “is there a reason you didn’t drop in on him for a surprise lunch?”

“Yes,” Lars says, wrapping his coat around himself, getting to his feet. “Though I prefer to discuss this over a meal, and indoors. It cannot be good for you to sit out in this wind. I am certain it won’t help relations between Hermann and myself should any ill effects ensue.”

“You two are creepily similar,” Newt says, accepting Lars’s hand. He’s pulled energetically to his feet.

“That, I’m sure, is the source of most of our difficulties,” Lars agrees. 

Fifteen minutes later, they’re looking at one another over food, but, more importantly, coffee. Newt feels about sixty-four percent better. After he downs half his coffee, his airways calm down and open up, remembering what they’re for, letting him breathe like a normal person. Then he goes for the soup. Chicken and rice for Newt, because it seems vaguely virtuous, but not unambiguously virtuous, like salad would be. Lars opts for half a sandwich and a beef stew thing that looks pretty good. 

“Just, please tell me you’re not here to warn me about some international conspiracy,” Newt says, breaking the conceptual ice once it seems like it’s time. 

Lars shakes his head, chewing, then says, “I would like to achieve some kind of rapprochement with my son. You seemed like the person best positioned to give advice.”

Whoa. This is a little surprising. Also—is Newt really the best? That seems unlikely. What about Karla? What about Hermann’s mother? 

Well, there’s the Drifting angle to consider. 

Okay, fine. Newt, arguably, is the best person on the planet to comment on the complexities of Gottliebian family relations—but he’s ill prepared. He hasn’t spent a lot of time detangling Hermann’s feelings for his father. Why? It’s weirdly invasive, that’s why. Nor did he ever envision being put in this position by Dr. Gottlieb Senior. 

Now? Ugh. He does want this for Hermann though. Badly. 

“You seem reluctant,” Lars observes.

“NooOOooo.” Newt draws out the word into something that sounds, yeah, unambiguously reluctant. “I think it would be great if you guys—you two—if things were better. I just don’t see why you would need my help.”

“Despite multiple attempts at reconciliation,” Lars says, “I have made no significant progress in the past seven years.”

“Multiple attempts?” Newt echoes, frowning, scanning back. Seven years? That would be 2020, and in 2020—he clicks over, briefly, into one of Hermann’s memories—Geneva, holy shit, they’d had dinner together. Silverware, sparkling wine, the Coastal Wall, extreme distress, a job offer, Newton—Newt wrestles the memory down before it sucks him in. But it’s enough. He has the gist of that first time.

“Yes,” Lars says. “Every encounter proceeds in the same manner. I made no attempt at real conversation during your visit last year because I had no expectation of a different outcome. I interacted with you very little because I didn’t think he would like it if I became too friendly with you. I’m not planning to tell him about this conversation.”

Lots to unpack. Newt feels exhausted at the prospect, but that’s a Gottliebian sentiment right there. Careful careful careful. Weirdly, relationships become confusing with EPIC Rapport. Mako had said something to this effect as well, so maybe it’s just Drifting in general. This explains Raleigh’s improbable affection for Newt, amongst other things.

Newt looks at Lars Gottlieb and thinks, very clearly, to himself, Not my dad. Guy I am trying to help.

He feels less exhausted. Okay. The question is why is Dr. Gottlieb Sr. getting nowhere with Dr. Gottlieb Jr. when he tries to do some metaphorical gap bridging?

“How have you approached the conversation in the past?” Newt asks.

“I’ve tried laying out, as I see it, the grounds of our disagreements so that we might discuss them rationally.”

Newt winces.

“Indeed,” Lars says, dryly. “After several failures, I tried apologizing directly. This has, arguably, been even less successful.”

Ugh. Hermann, Newt thinks, his heart hurting a little more than a little bit. 

Newt debates how much to share. All of it? None of it? Just the pieces he can use? The Drift? Not the drift. Not ever the Drift. The Drift does not pass Newt’s lips. Not now, not ever. That’s Hermann’s story to tell. But other than that—

“It’s the war,” Newt tells him. “What happened during. What happened at the end. And when he thinks about it—he doesn’t think about himself. That’s the part that really clinches it. He thinks of the Coastal Wall as doing our colleagues, but also me personally, significant harm. So when you bring it up, which I’m sure you do, or when you bring up anything related to the war, you—this is kind of awkward. You’re indirectly talking to him about me.”

Hermann is very sensitive about Newt. Very. It makes being Newt somewhat awkward at times. 

Lars shakes his head, not getting it. “This has nothing to do with you. I’ve never even mentioned your name. I simply wish to move on. To put the war and the Coastal Wall behind us.”

Don’t we all.

“I think you can put it behind you. I hope. But I don’t think you’re going to be able to apologize. Probably—” and here Newt cheats again a little, looking back this time to 2023, 2026. “Probably when you’ve laid things out logically that’s pissed him off disproportionately—”

“Yes.”

“And the reason for the disproportionate response,” Newt continues, “is that he feels like he can see outcomes more optimal than the one we got, and—” 

Whoa. Hey. Hello. Newt has to reorganize himself, or he’s going to cry about Hermann over lunch. Not okay. He saves that for DINNER. Where is this coming from? Can’t you just, he thinks at Hermann, let go of these retrospective analyses that are torturing you? Can’t you just take our win as a win? 

“It really upsets him,” Newt finishes. Stick that landing, Geiszler. He does.

Lars looks like he finds this information as ridiculously tragic as Newt does. They sit there, eating, taking a little break from talking. Not that Newt needs that or anything. It just happens naturally.

Lars gets them going again. “I understand why speaking of such things would upset him, but—I had hoped, eventually, he might again be able to separate his idea of me as his father from me as one of the architects of the Coastal Wall.”

“I think he can already do that,” Newt says. “But, uh, you’re not hearing me.”

Lars Gottlieb raises his eyebrows, sips his tea.

“He shuts me out as well. For different reasons and on different topics. He tells me I won’t understand. Me! That I won’t understand! I was there the whole time! It drives me crazy. Absolutely insane. He blames himself for things that are NOT his fault—” and, damn it, Newt’s losing his grip on himself. Again. He stops. “Sorry,” he rasps.

“Take your time,” Lars tells him. 

Newt should be able to do this. He’s sure he can. He’s not borderline crying about the war. He’s borderline crying because he loves Hermann so fucking much, and a) there’s some kind of problem eating away at the guy that he’s shutting Newt out of, and b) Newt’s worried he won’t be successful in getting Lars Gottlieb to understand that.

He drinks some soup, calms himself down. 

“He’s tangled up the war, the whole war, with everything that happened to me. So what I’m telling you is that when you’re laying all of this out for him, trying to apologize, at least fifty percent of why he reacts the way he does, at least, is because you’re pulling me into it. Even if you never say my name.”

“Hmm,” Lars says, with that Gottliebian glimmer in his eye that comes with the generation of a novel idea. “When I knew that business would bring me to California I had thought to try again with him. But—your comments—”

“Ugh,” Newt says. “No. No. Don’t give up on trying. Please try.”

Lars shakes his head. “You mistake me. If you’re correct, which I very much suspect you are, perhaps I should engage with him about you directly. Counterintuitive though it might appear, you are the single theatre in which he and I have worked with any kind of accord over the past seven years.”

“Maybe,” Newt says, going from way negative to mildly positive as he thinks through the suggestion. “Maybe. When he needed help, he did go to you, and you did come through. And he might—there are things he categorically refuses to talk to me about. You know what happened to me, there aren’t many people who do. Even I—my memory of that time is next to nothing. I have no idea what he went through, and he won’t talk about it.”

“You think he might talk to me? About those things?”

“Maybe,” Newt says. “He’ll talk to me about the Coastal Wall.”

“Hmm.” Lars gives Newt a speculative look, as though he’s a particularly unruly equation. 

“Drop in on him at his office,” Newt advises. “Invite yourself over for dinner. Afterwards, if everything goes well, I’ll make myself scarce and you guys can give it another go.”

As soon as he makes the suggestion, he feels mildly guilty. The mild guilt turns pretty quickly into moderate guilt. Hermann would NOT like the idea of Newt conspiring with his father. 

Not at all. 

That’s too bad. 

Newt doesn’t like the idea of Hermann letting the past ruin the present. No more kaiju? No more Coastal Wall? No reason why the guy can’t go home and talk Bavarian Waldglas with his dad. 

Lars Gottlieb insists on walking Newt all the way back to his building before going to find Hermann. Newt has a nearly intractable coughing fit about halfway there. There is a very particular Gottliebian expression that Hermann’s entire family is capable of producing with the exception of his mother, but Newt gets the prototype directed straight at him. Fixedly, and with maximum intensity. Yikes. Fortunately, Newt is, by now, nearly immune to its effects. He shrugs it off, no problem, both the look and the coughing, then banishes Gottlieb Sr. to the Math Building. Newt has pressing matters that need his attention. 

Namely? Confronting the young people.

They’re in trouble.

Newt realizes that he hasn’t yet made a concerted effort to scare them. They fear him zero. That’s terrible. 

Isn’t it?

Hmmm. 

Their lack of fear seems like an unforgivable oversight until, again, he reminds himself they’re not cutting into toxic xenobiological samples on a daily basis. Nor will they ever be. He should probably think this through a little further. It’s time to take a cold, hard look at the history, status, and prospects of Dr. Newton Geiszler, PhD. 

When he gets back to his office, he shuts the door, locks it, and starts pacing. Good for stamina. Eventually.

Okay. Pre-2015 Newt? Child prodigy successfully transitioned to scientific superstar. 

2015-2025 Newt? Excessively badass Deputy Director of JET Force, excruciatingly badass director of K-Science for the PPDC. 

2025-2026 Newt? Not exactly a banner year. 

2027 Newt? Trending toward a traditional science track. Like, Jake, for example, when he’s 37, will probably be a relatively new PI. Double post-docs are becoming the norm. To Sam Gordon, Newt looks “average,” in terms of where he is in his career trajectory relative to his age. Ugh. Sam Gordon isn’t a big picture thinker. If he were, he’d have given Newt tenure. 

Dr. Newton Geiszler of the academic apex and consciousness that’s triplex hits a pen against his hand and looks out his window. What does he need his lab, as a collective, to do for him, and what does he personally do for his lab? It’s not a typical setup.

Jake is the most extreme example. Jake has a thing for Newt. Not romantically, but intellectually. Newt gets it. A lot of people have an intellectual thing for him. Lightcap. Anderson. Pretty much every professor he ever worked for. His Department Chair at MIT. Sam Gordon, probably. Jake had shown up in Newt’s empty, unpacked lab and found Newt sitting on the floor bleeding into one of Hermann’s handkerchiefs. Newt had told him he was taking no rotators, but Jake had just put his bag on the floor and started slicing open boxes. Jake has done way more for Newt than a graduate student should do for his PI. Jake sets the tone. Jake keeps the new ones in line. Jake keeps the lab, at large, from asking Newt about the war.

Did he ask for that? No. Does he benefit from it? Deeply.

Don’t yell at Jake, his brain says.

But Newt wants to, that’s his instinct, to rake Jake over the coals so hard he never forgets it. 

And why would THAT be?

With the asking of the question, he has its answer. His throat closes, he drops into his chair, and he sits there, trying to decide if he can do what he needs to do. The answer’s a solid: maybe. He pulls his glasses off and shuts his eyes.

What a bizarre day. It’s not even half over. 

Newt’s own problems with the end of the war are less sad than Hermann’s. More predictable. Hermann can barely engage at all. Newt can, and has. With Hermann, with Mako, with himself. But if he’s going to try to talk to his lab—even a little bit, that’s different. He shouldn’t pretend it’ll be easy. He’ll have a hard time with it, and then he’ll have to go home and he’ll have to help the Gottliebs not rip one another’s throats out. Can he do it?

Again, a solid maybe. 

He’s made his peace with all of this, everything that’s happened. He has, yes, but it would be stupid to go too far, to try too much. But his goal is self-limited. That works in his favor. He’s not planning to bare his soul. He’s delivering a short, clear message. He can control the room. There’s no danger they’ll turn aggressive, too inquisitive, hostile. He can keep his comments to less than five minutes. And then he’ll leave. He’ll walk to Hermann’s office. Show up early, hang out there for the rest of the day. Maybe he’ll find Lars there, but he doubts it—the chances Hermann would interrupt his workday for his father in more than a nominal way are effectively zero. 

Fine.

Newt shows up in the conference room, ten past three, prepared. Albuterol’d. Tea in hand. Coat and bag in tow. Cough drops in his pocket. They’re all waiting, sitting in tense silence.

Maybe they’re a little afraid of him.

Jake’s jaw is set, Amy’s extremely impressive poker face is out in full force. Daniel sits with hunched shoulders, Ping stares at the floor. Charu, in particular, looks acutely unhappy. 

Newt will need to be extra nice to her. Tomorrow.

No small talk. Newt shuts the door and sits, head of the table. Jake’s at the other end. Their usual configuration. He crosses his arms, looks at Jake, raises an eyebrow, and says, “Explain.” That’s all. He doesn’t smile, he softens nothing. He’d like to, but he can’t. He’s too anxious about what’s coming. Even now, he’s not sure he’ll be able to do it. 

“I’m really sorry, Newt,” Jake offers. 

“I said,” Newt replies, riding neutral, “explain.”

Jake swallows, looks down, clearly uncomfortable. “What happened—it came from me and, um, the chair. Dr. Gordon. When I affiliated, Dr. Gordon told me that it was unlikely, but if anyone from the PPDC, or, in any kind of uniform really, were to come, to talk to you, or try to take you with them, that he wanted to be informed. ASAP. And I—well, when people have come, and joined, when Daniel joined, and Charu, I told them too. Informally we discussed it and there was something of, a little bit of, a kind of protocol kinda put in place?”

Newt almost smiles, but doesn’t. 

“And we thought—”

“I know what you thought,” Newt says. 

“It’s not Jake’s fault,” Charu says, the words bursting out of her like she can’t stop them. 

Newt shakes his head. He crosses his arms. “Do you guys understand why I’m upset?”

There’s a deafening silence.

“I can sit here all day,” Newt says.

“Because,” Jake says reluctantly, “we, um, overstepped. Interfered in your personal life.”

“No,” Newt says. You interfere in my personal life all the time. 

“Campus security could have detained Dr. Gottlieb’s father,” Ping offers.

“That would have been awkward at dinner tonight,” Newt agrees, “but no, Ping, that’s not why.”

Again, more silence. Newt starts gearing up. He takes a sip of tea, recrosses his arms, rests them on the table. God, this is hard. He already feels like he’s in danger of weeping. Why is it so hard? He thinks of all they don’t know—an almost unbridgeable gap. He thinks of Lightcap and mistake mistake mistake MISTAKE. 

The mood of the room shifts. They understand abruptly that he’s not angry. He’s upset, and that’s much much worse. For them, it is. If he cries, they’re gonna cry, at least one of them, and then it’ll be all over. Newt is on the verge of standing up. Walking out. He almost does it. He shifts his weight, flexes a foot—but. 

This isn’t about him.

It’s about them, he tells himself. Them, them, THEM. Not you. Not Lightcap.

Lightcap, though, why is he thinking of her now? Because. Because she would struggle through this kind of thing, this exact thing, in this exact way. It’d been hard for her too, to talk about—

What is he doing to himself?

He brings a hand up, shields his eyes, looks down.

Okay, this is not going well.

You’re their me, baby, Lightcap whispers. She’d said that to him after he’d lost a tech to unexpectedly pressurized peripheral lymphatics. Yamarishi. You can do this. I know you can.

There’s not a lot to save these kids from, and for that, he’s grateful. But. There is one thing.

Charu, sitting closest to him, shifts in her chair.

“Newt,” Jake says, his voice unsteady.

Newt raises a hand, doesn’t look up. 

They are frozen. There is no sound. Are they breathing? Yikes. He hopes so.

It takes a while, but, finally, his throat lets his vocal cords go, and he can talk. 

“In life, you have finite resources.” Not a strong start. He clears his throat, does better. “Finite resources. You trade them for what you want. What you need. To understand the way or ways in which a trans-dimensional portal might be shut, I Drifted with a fragment of tissue, saw the anteverse, pulled information from that exchange, but an interface goes both ways. Leatherback and Otachi were dispatched—both targeting Hong Kong—to specifically hunt me down. Personally. What might have happened if they had reached me is unclear. They didn’t. Again, I Drifted, this time with an intact kaiju nervous system and the second time, I obtained enough tactical information to assist in closing the breach.”

Come back, the kids hiss, sadly. 

“The Pan-Pacific Defense Corps, an international institution where I worked, for many years, felt there was some significant risk inherent to what I’d done. Inherent to the fact that I’d been trackable by the kaiju. They asked me to assist them in designing and performing a series of experiments to determine the magnitude of that risk. Please understand that I—I agreed with them. I agree with them still. The experiments I subsequently participated in involved additional drifting with the limited neural network left on this side of the closed breach. After—some time, it was felt that—the decision was made that—I was not a material threat to the survival of the human species. They let me go.”

He’s white knuckled his way through the worst of it. He drops the hand that’s been half-shielding his face. His tone recovering, getting stronger as he goes.

“I tell you this so you understand the stakes. The PPDC protects the integrity of this planet. If they want to come back for me—if there’s more they need to ascertain—you’re not going to stop them. I don’t want you to. They will not go away if you make their lives difficult for twenty seconds. There is nowhere I can escape them. If they come for me, you let them take me. You say nothing. You do nothing. Feel free to call Sam Gordon after they’ve gone.” 

He’s made it. All he has to do is drive it home.

“There are many things you can help me with. Many things you have helped me with.” Finally, he’s able to look up. He locks eyes with Jake. “This? It isn’t one of them. You do not get in their way. Not ever. Not for anything.” 

They stare at him. Huge eyes, shocked expressions.

He smiles at them. It’s an effort. He probably looks awful. “I appreciate the sentiment, but get rid of whatever ‘protocol’ you came up with. Got it?”

“Got it.” Jake answers for the room.

Newt stands, puts on his coat, shoulders his bag, picks up his tea, and walks out. He descends the stairs and exits the building. Under a sky of shredded clouds, he sees what his mind has been trying to show him for whole spans of minutes now. Caitlin Lightcap on the ice, kneeling, her hands pressed to her side, her helmet off, her hair blown free, looking up at the corpse of Karloff and the rent-open chest of Brawler Yukon, leaching radiation. Laughing. Pure joy.

“We did it, you know,” he murmurs, “but I like to think you always knew we would.”