It Got Worse

Evan did not appreciate the hooded cape. Really, he thought it looked pretty ridiculous, but he kept it to himself. Probably for the better, because Evan was also thinking something along the lines of 'Chloe looked like a character from a fantasy roleplaying game' only a whole lot less charitable.

When she offered to get his drink, Evan shrugged. He wasn't going to fight it, but he figured he should probably make a point that he was very, very rich. She probably assumed he was broke, because most people who hopped dimensions had nothing, but Evan had effectively tripped into a very wealthy family he'd thought he lost.

"Yeah," Evan confirmed, grabbing a seat and trying very hard to focus on Chloe, and not the fact that his drink was being prepared by magic.

Thankfully, Chloe filled in his great big blank very quickly. He'd assumed she had arrived only recently, but if she'd arrived years ago, it made sense why she'd been so surprised.

"Oh, that makes more sense then what I thought," Evan said. "Kinda assumed you were a recent arrival, but if you've been that long without word it makes sense. Everything you said pretty much lined up with what you would have known, I imagine. You probably left before things got real bad?"

Evan had heard of the school, and while she'd mentioned it before he hadn't quite made the connection. He hadn't known anything about her timeline back then. If he'd thought about it, he might have eased her into things. It had to be traumatic to hear about what a shithole your old world had become, but Evan wasn't that kind of person. He believed in getting straight to the point, and not beating around the bush, and there was no beating around the bush in what he told Chloe.

"Didn't realize you were from the school," Evan said, "but things basically got worse after that. I'd say your school getting attacked was the first big fuckup, because some people blamed the government for trying to attack it, and the government blamed the people, and no one was really sure who was responsible for it. People started getting lynched in the streets, and everyone was accusing everyone else. Some people wanted aberrant rounded up and arrested for, I don't know, crimes against humanity or something, but as shit got worse and worse you started seeing a more neutral faction pushing for all the aberrant to be rounded up and brought somewhere safe. Only, since you've got half a brain, you'll realize that's a shit idea, and no one can prove who is or isn't an aberrant. They kept trying to come up with tests, and it was like every week there was some new you can test your friends and family with this! method that didn't work for shit."

Evan grimaced, remembering all the methods. Some of them had some sort of logic behind them, but plenty had just been feeding off the hysteria.

"Any aberrant with half a brain kept to themselves. There was no reason to out yourself, but that wasn't enough to keep most people safe. Around... December? Maybe January? A bunch of people got murdered in public, one of who was definitely an aberrant, and the government said enough was enough. Insisted every aberrant turn themselves in for protection. Anyone who was public got rounded up, and the government started moving people to sites. I guess kinda like your school, only way more private, and we didn't get to sit around for math class."

"Internment camps, but yeah," Evan corrected. As far as he knew, no one was killed, and that was the idea he got when people said concentration camp, even if it wasn't entirely right. He wasn't a master of history, not by far, but he knew enough to know there were certainly parallels.

At least in their own world. He wasn't clear if things had happened the same in this world, but he was sure something like it had happened.

"I was only in one for a bit," Evan said. "Pretty much what you were expecting, probably. Everyone lives in communal housing. You get fed. They gave you the option of taking a job, which was pretty much menial labor, but it let you make things a bit more comfortable. Idea was that it was temporary, and that when things calmed down we'd all get to go home, but after a year of that it's hard to believe, I guess. I left one pretty quickly, got pulled out for a different task. Ended up helping deal with aberrant when they became an issue. Normal police aren't equipped to handle superpowers and fireballs, but other aberrants generally are."

Evan was used to that contempt. He'd seen it a lot. Mission after mission, he'd seen it. Situations where people were thankful he was there were rare. Most of the time he was just the enemy. Dealing with humans? The enemy for being an aberrant. Dealing with aberrants? An enemy for working with humans.

At least she seemed self aware.

"Probably," Evan said, not even bothering to hide it. "I went where they pointed. I'm not going to make excuses for it or anything. It was what it was."

That was how life was, as far as Evan was concerned.

"When I got jerked over here, the camps were still operating. Even after years, and a lot of promises that it'd all be over soon, things were pretty much the same." And people had been losing hope, but to Evan, that was clearly implied. Anyone would lose hope.

Evan's eyes briefly followed the cup as it caught itself in mid air, floating off to... turn itself in? He wasn't sure, and after a moment he decided it didn't matter, letting his attention return to Chloe.

New Mexico didn't really have any significance to him. He knew what she was hoping for — some kind of oh yeah, I remember them, they ran away and are fine! — but life didn't work like that. Tez had dealt with hundreds of abberants, with families or without. Even within New Mexico, he'd dealt with maybe a dozen situations, of which he remembered maybe half.

"Without knowing names, faces, personal details? Couldn't give you anything, sorry." He felt like he probably should have given her something, because she was so desperately searching for answers, but really?

"You were at the school, which means they knew you were one. They might have investigated your family, and that might have gone bad. Whether or not they were an abberant wouldn't have really mattered. The idea was that it was genetic--and in a lot of cases it was--and there's no way to prove you aren't, either."

Probably some of the worst news she could have gotten, but Evan's voice was clear and even.