Private Finished Seeing Double

Even with a literally flawless memory, the fact was that Angelo couldn't think of everything at once. While he would technically never forget, things still could (and did) slip his mind regularly. Perhaps the most obvious example right then as he headed towards another one of the apartment blocks was the alert he'd set up with the scouts when he first arrived. Angelo was very good at using things like government resources to their full extent, and when he'd found out the scouts could alert you to new arrivals (with their permission, anyway) he'd quickly signed up to be informed of anyone who came from Halcyon City (or who knew about it).

At the time it had simply been the easiest option. There had been a whole bundle of people who might have shown up, and listing them all out had been harder than just adding a blanket to Halcyon City. But that had fallen by the wayside after the evacuation was over. Realistically, no one else was coming. Their world was dead and gone, and Angelo had seen that for himself.

So when he did get an alert, it was... a surprise. He didn't know how to feel about it. Excited? Horrified? A part of him had accepted that no one else was coming. There would be no more last minute arrivals. Breakneck wasn't going to appear at the last minute having helped save the day. DeadManSwitch was just dead, not faking dead.

Only now the door wasn't shut. If someone else had survived, that meant the possibility was still open that anyone could show up.

It made him feel a bit queasy, if he was being honest with himself.

He tried to shelve that as he headed up to the apartment number he'd been given. Maybe it was wrong. Maybe they were from Halcyon, California and the whole thing was a big misunderstanding. But it was hard not to feel like the possibility was still there as Angelo stopped just short of the still unlabeled door, reached up, and knocked once.

Angelo's brain did the mental equivalent of a backflip when Broen threw open the door.

Because the moment it opened--complete with the highly irreverent motherfucker what--his brain said ah, there's Broen.

And then a half second later it said wait, what?

Because it both was and wasn't Broen standing in front of him. On one hand, he looked a lot like Broen. On the other, Angelo was pretty good at spotting the little details, and there were a lot of little details that were off. New scars. Slightly different hair length. A few more lines on Broen's face.

And, well, Angelo wasn't stupid. He could put two and a two together and get four.

So he immediately held his hands up, palms out, to signal for Broen to hold on.

"Not the Angelo you know," he said quickly. There were at least three of him on the island, so the obvious conclusion to jump to wasn't exactly a leap. "I'm from another timeline, but I got a notification someone from Halcyon was here, so I came out to see who it was."

But a part of him--a big part of him if he was being completely honest--was really, really relieved that this Broen knew who he was.

It meant things probably weren't too different.

The more Angelo saw of Broen, the more differences he saw. Not physical differences—he'd already looked those over and cataloged all of them—but differences in demeanor. In the way Broen moved. In the way he talked. It was still early, and he hadn't seen much, but they were the sort of things that, if Angelo hadn't already known he was a different one, would have raised a bright red flag in his head and told him this isn't the Broen you know.

"You still call me boyscout, if that's what you mean," Angelo said as he kicked his shoes off at the door. Maybe he should have been more cautious, but... well, Broen was Broen, even if he wasn't the same one. "I was still a part of the Defiant and all that. The cyborg arm..." He glanced down at it, flexing the metal fingers, and then shrugged. "Did you guys have the Gultha?"

Alright. That was a... a very, very big difference. Angelo was trying to wrap his head around all the implications, but there were a lot. Of course, Angelo's brain went straight to his dad: What was Basilio even like if he'd never had Adraxis sitting in his brain riding the passenger seat like he owned the place?

"Big scary thing from beyond the stars," Angelo said, mentally flipping through his senses. "Sorry, hold on - you're Broen-Crawford?"

Which was, in retrospect, a really fucking weird thing to say. If Broen's Angelo had never encountered the Gultha, he didn't have any of Angelo's knowledge based powers.

Of all the weirdness to come out of it, having Broen be Godfrey Broen-Crawford was somehow, by far, the absolute weirdest. Broen hated his dad for entirely justified reasons, and taking his name was... well, that was something else.

"Okay, we're totally going out of order," Angelo said. "How did you get here? Because that seems like... I don't know, step one."

If there was a whole second evacuation... that would be something.