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Marcus Lewis's throat went dry. The jackalope nearly choked on his drink, the carbonated beverage stopping midway down his throat, bubbles scratching inside and leaving him struggling to get a breath of air.

"Huh?" he said, unable to put together any words.

Across the table from him, to his left and right, Melody and Karl were equally dumbfounded. The two turned their attention towards Dylan, who was leaned forward on his elbows, his eyes locked onto the jackalope's.

"You heard me," the pegasus replied calmly. Too calmly, almost. The careful speaking patterns of a trained actor, every word coming out like its pitch and speed were deliberately chosen. "The police are looking for you. There's a statewide search. You're on the run from the cops. When did you plan on letting us know about this? Or did you already know and thought we wouldn't find out?"

His final question aimed itself at Melody, firing over the table like a bolt from a crossbow. The unicorn's eyes went wide, and she looked at Marcus again, then back to Dylan.

"I didn't know anything about the cops!" she exclaimed, sounding panicked. "What the fuck, is that true? Are the cops looking for you?"

In an instant, all the realities Marcus had spent the last few days pretending didn't exist made themselves known. The millstone around his neck remembered its weight and slipped off of the cliff's edge. The faces that Marcus had been seeing as inviting him into their home were now staring in disbelief at him, with the same mix of alarm and suspicion that he was more used to getting from the purebreds of the world. He wasn't supposed to get it here. Not from them.

"I... I mean..." he began, stammering, his mind scraping around inside his skull for any excuse he could come up with. Some justification. Something to make him not the bad guy any more. He opted for that age old technique, one he'd gotten good at honing with Barbara.

"Wait, how do you even know that? Did the cops talk to you?"

Marcus deflected.

Dylan, of course, was either much less easily riled than Mrs Lewis or more practiced at hiding his reactions, so he simply put one finger atop the smartphone sitting on the table in front of him.

"No, and I'm rather grateful that they didn't, because I don't particularly enjoy lying to the authorities. However, I did get an alert today. One telling me about a jackalope on the run and to be careful around him as he's considered unpredictable. To report him to the authorities as soon as he's seen but not to approach. Just to be safe."

The words in Marcus's throat turned to cotton before they made it up to his mouth, catching, scratching inside him and refusing to come out. He felt his heart rate climbing rapidly, fighting against the rush of adrenaline in his veins. He had to stay calm.

Smell the roses.

Blow out the candles.

"Wait, you got an alert? I didn't get one of those," Melody said, pulling her phone out and looking at it.

"Me neither, what the fuck?" Karl echoed.

"I don't know, it might be a carrier thing," Dylan said, sounding faintly cross that the topic was going off course. "The point is I got it, and if I got it, so did a lot of others. I d-"

Karl interrupted him. "When'd you get it?"

Dylan took a breath, rolling his eyes. "I don't know, sometime this morning, why?"

The hippogriff's whole body gave an unhappy ripple. "What the hell, Dyl? Why didn't you say anything?"

Another quiet look of exasperation from the de-winged equine. "Well I'm sorry, I'd rather assumed that I wasn't the only one who'd seen it. I was waiting to see if either of you brought it up."

Karl groaned, shaking his head. "Fuckin' actors, always gotta make it dramatic."

Briefly, Dylan's practiced tone and posture wavered. "Oh come on, Karl, that's just being unfair. You're always going on these long-winded tirades about anything and everything and the one time I have something serious suddenly I'm being dramatic..."

"Guys!" Melody cut in, her voice loud enough to get both of their attention but not so loud that it attracted much attention from elsewhere in the bar. "It doesn't fucking matter when he got it. Are you sure about this? Like, you read it right? They mean him?"

Dylan gave her a wry look. "I can double check, I suppose it's possible they meant one of the other jackalopes around town."

Melody narrowed her eyes, shooting daggers at Dylan. "Okay, okay, just... hold on. Marcus, what the fuck? You're on the run from the cops?"

Marcus Lewis's entire body was suddenly on high alert. His breaths pulsed rather than flowed, eyes darting from one corner of Tulune's to another and his ears picking up as much of every conversation in the room as he could. If Dylan had heard, how many others had? Who else in Boston had seen the alert? How many of them paid attention? Cared enough? What did Dylan mean when he said that Marcus was considered "unpredictable"?

The jackalope swallowed hard, forcing himself to settle at least enough to speak coherently. "I didn't know the cops were after me!" he lied. "Fuck, you make it sound like I robbed a bank or something! I mean, I knew my parents were blowing my phone up about where I am, but that's it!" He looked across the table at each of the three, feeling the ground crumbling under his feet, his place in their circle vanishing.

"Besides, didn't you all run away too? I'm not the only one!"

Out of the other members of the Exo Club, Melody seemed to be visually struggling with this new revelation the most. In contrast to Dylan's well-rehearsed calm and Karl's severe expression that only barely deviated from his usual, the unicorn was looking like she was having a hard time stopping herself from causing a scene. Then again, she'd been the one to invite him in. She was giving him a place to stay. She wondered if it counted as harboring a fugitive.

"That's not the same!" she suddenly exclaimed. "When we left, our parents had enough of us. They weren't chasing after us, and they definitely weren't calling the fucking police! Oh my god, Marcus, do you have any idea how much fucking trouble you're putting us in?"

Karl broke in then, holding a hand up towards Melody. There were feathers on the table, reminders of the anxiety that the big avian was doing his best to hold down. "Easy Mel. Just... holy shit, kid. What the hell were was your plan? Did you think everyone back home was just gonna forget?"

Marcus's head was swimming. The familiar vertigo of an incoming panic attack. He felt that same impulse to leap from his chair and sprint out the door, a need to move. To do something to get away, but he didn't have a clue where to. He looked back at Karl, his eyes pleading.

"I don't know! Fuck... I had to leave! I couldn't stay back there anymore, you guys gotta understand that at least, don't you?"

The hippogriff groaned, rubbing at his face. "Kid... I mean, yeah of course I get that. We all get that, but fucking hell... not like this. You gotta go back, you get that, right?"

It was the grimmest part of the story that Marcus knew was coming, but he'd been desperately avoiding. Going back home. He did have to, didn't he? He wasn't going to be getting an apartment, wouldn't be moving in with any of the others here. What else could he do? Eventually he was going to have to. There wasn't anywhere else for him to be. Right?

Marcus shook his head, leaning back in his seat, getting his old defiance going again.

"I'm not going back."

"What do you mean you're not going back?" Melody asked in response.

Marcus shrugged. "I'm not fucking going back. If the cops wanna come and take me in, fuck 'em. They can put me in jail. I'm not going back there."

The other three exchanged a look. Dylan in particular was seeming more concerned now, with all of them having a feeling there was more going on than had been said.

The pegasus leaned in, his voice dropping again. "Marcus... it can't have been that bad, can it?" he started. Dylan didn't want to make assumptions, but also didn't want to come across as dismissive. He hoped Marcus would understand their worry and not go on the defensive too fiercely.

Marcus, meanwhile, was seeing his fellow exotics differently now. He wasn't a part of them, either. He thought he was. Hoped he could be. They didn't see him like that, though, he could just tell. He could see it in their faces.

"You don't get it," the jackalope nearly spat. "Yeah, I know, shit was rough for all of us, but you know what? There's nothing for me back there. Not a fucking thing. No friends, the school didn't want me there, and you know what I was to my parents? A science experiment. Just a fucking case for my mom to use and show off at symposiums and seminars. She didn't want a son, she wanted a subject to study. Hey Karl?"

Once he was confident he had the hippogriff's specific attention, Marcus went on the offensive. "What drugs do they have you on, anyway? I know you have to be careful with alcohol, so I'm guessing at least some benzos, maybe throw in an SSRI? Those feathers are looking rough, is that a tic that you started getting after a new med?"

The awkward silence between the two seemed to be exactly what Marcus was looking for. "Yeah, see, that's the funny thing. When your mom's a shrink with itchy script fingers you end up trying a whole lot of drugs to see which ones make you normal. Spoiler alert, none of them will. If you're smart, you get good at knowing what to say."

Karl shifted uneasily in his seat, having to stop himself from pulling more feathers now that he was being made more conscious of it.

"Kid, hold on, that ain't quite right. You gotta understand..."

The jackalope stopped him. "No, I understand plenty! And stop calling me a kid!" he hissed, that one word cutting deeper than he'd ever admit. "I'm tired of all of it. I don't give a shit if the cops are after me. I'm not going back."

It was a turn that none of the others had been expecting, though perhaps they should have. The Marcus Lewis they'd been getting to know was quiet, a bit awkward, with a sharp wit for sure, but they did need to remember that he'd run away from home and had been talking about getting into fights. Everyone at the table was on eggshells, trying their best to move forward carefully.

"Okay, listen... Marcus," Dylan began, doing his best to sound gentle. "We're not... I don't think anyone here is suggesting you move back permanently, but you have to be reasonable here. Just look at the situation. Your parents are looking for you. The police are looking for you. This isn't going to go away. The longer you stay on the run, the worse it's going to get. Don't you see that? All you need to do is go back, settle your affairs at home. You're still young, there's time ahead. But you can't just stay out here and hope everything fixes itself by avoiding it."

Marcus's eyes shot from Melody, to Dylan, to Karl. Three pairs all pointed back at him, each one saying the same thing in their own way. He could hear it perfectly, even as their mouths stayed unmoving.

"C'mon, kiddo. It sucks, but you know what you gotta do."

"Please, Marcus, I'm begging you to think clearly."

"Don't be a dumbass, shit."

He'd packed up his life, left everything behind to come out to Boston. Against all odds, he'd somehow stumbled into not one, but a trio of exotic hybrids like him. They'd been through what he'd been through, felt the pain he did. They were supposed to help him, not turn their backs on him. They were supposed to be different. Everyone else kept pushing him off to someone else, but Marcus thought he'd finally found a group who cared about him and would actually think about him instead of themselves. They were cowards, worried about a little heat on them with him around.

Marcus stood up, refusing to make eye contact with them any longer. "I'm going to bed. It's been a long day," he said, and left Tulune's for his 'room' back at Temptations without another word, leaving the rest of the Exo Club to try and decide what the hell to do now.

Dylan sighed, rubbing at his face. He replayed the conversation in his head, the way he confronted Marcus. As much as he'd rehearsed it internally in the earlier hours, maybe he should have come in more gently. Not done it right at the table. Not just called him out in front of the others. Still, they deserved to know too, didn't they? And if they didn't, maybe it was best to just pull the bandage off...

"That coulda gone better."

Dylan snorted lightly, nostrils flared, nodding at Karl without looking at him. "Yeah. Yeah it could have. What now?"

Melody turned to look at the door of the bar briefly, then leaned onto the table again, absent-mindedly stirring her drink with the straw. "I'll go talk to him. Give him a little time to cool off. His head's probably all over the place."

The pegasus nodded, turning his phone over and unlocking the screen. "I just hope he doesn't do anything drastic."

Karl grunted. "I just hope we don't get fuckin' blamed for any of this. If they find out he's in town you know we'll be the first ones they turn to."

Dylan groaned lightly, the accuracy of that statement hitting him in the stomach. He tapped at his phone screen, flicking from one app to another, until he found a video. One that he'd watched several times that day, and had made it difficult to focus on work.

"I'm with Channel Six, WQRT in Weston, here at the residence of Barbara and Charles Lewis," said a young ferret in a suit. "Now as we reported earlier today, their son, an adopted jackalope, has been missing since Monday. From what we've gathered, he had a violent encounter with another student, got suspended, and then on the day he was set to return, drove off and hasn't been heard from since."

As the reporter spoke, an image was overlaid onto the screen, showing Marcus Lewis. It wasn't a terribly flattering picture, one that had been culled from social media from the looks of things. It showed Marcus, posed with a punk rock t-shirt, flipping his middle finger to the camera from in front of a computer and several band and movie posters. He looked like he was going out of his way to be as abrasive as possible in it.

The camera then cut to Marcus's mother. The small bird was standing next to her husband just outside the front door in front of a small gathering of reporters. It was clear that the story had gotten quite a bit of attention, as this particular moment appeared to have been organized in advance. A small press conference of sorts. Barbara looked to be fighting to keep her composure, Charles standing with a grim but steady expression on his face.

"I just want my son to come home," she said, with the careful cadence of someone who had been practicing their words carefully. "Please, he's not dangerous, he's not a criminal, he's just confused. Help me find my son and get him home safely. Thank you, and I am eternally grateful for all of your assistance and understanding."

With that, the couple went back into their home, ignoring attempts from the throng of reporters to get some questions to them. The camera went back to the ferret, standing a ways back from the small gathering.

"That was Marcus's adoptive mother, Doctor Barbara Lewis. Now we've come to understand that she has been acting as his therapist for many years, and that Marcus is in fact medicated, though precisely what conditions he may or may not have we don't know at this time. So once again, in the interest of precaution, we do recommend not to approach Marcus if you do see him, but instead call the number shown on screen now immediately. I'm Danny Longfield, WQRT News, back to you in the studio."

The video stopped there, and Dylan placed the phone back on the table. He'd seen it enough times that he was subconsciously mouthing along with every word of it, while his friends to either side were leaned in, staring at the small report.

"Jeez... his mom seemed really broken up," Melody observed, uneasily.

"Doctor Lewis..."

The unicorn turned towards Karl. "You know her?"

Karl immediately grunted, shaking his head, deflecting. "No, no, no. Just... er, the whole doctor thing. Fuck. My dad sure as shit wasn't callin' a meeting when I left. Mel, you want some backup when you go talk to him?"

Melody shook her head. "I don't think so. Probably best if he doesn't feel like he's under attack again. It's hard enough already, we don't need to make it worse."

Karl nodded. "Okay. You know the drill, though. Anything goes sideways, call me."

She chuckled. "I think he just needs to get his head on straight. He's not a bad kid. It'll be fine."

Later, Melody was walking as slowly as she could back to Temptations, through the front door, behind the bar, and along the hallways that led to her dressing room. She wasn't entirely sure what to say, or how to even start. Just like the others, she hadn't had the best experience with parenting, and at that moment she felt like she had to be a bit of a mother figure for Marcus. She definitely knew what not to say, how not to talk to a young hybrid struggling with identity and belonging. Maybe that was enough. Just take whatever her mom would have said and then say the opposite of that.

Standing in front of the door, Melody was struck by how much of the music from the front area bled into the back. She hoped it hadn't made sleep too difficult the last few nights.

"Marcus? Buddy? You awake?" she called, knocking with enough force to be heard, but not so much she would come across as aggressive.

No response.

"Marcus? C'mon, we can talk this out."

Silence still from the other side.

For a few moments, Melody stood there, in front of her own door, as though she were locked out of it. She really did feel like a mother dealing with her son after a fight. It felt like she was invading his personal space somehow, but the unicorn decided to let herself in. She pulled her key out and unlocked the door, easing it open before stepping inside.

"Marcus, listen, that was a whole lot that just kinda got dropped on our heads, you know? We're just worried about you is all, you..."

Marcus wasn't there.

Not only was Marcus not there, but there was no indication that he'd ever been there. No clothing, no bags, no laptop, nothing. Even the couch had been folded back into place, like the room had been intentionally put back to how it was before Marcus had arrived.

"...fuck."

Marcus Lewis stomped his way down the street, keeping as far off to the side as he could manage. As if a jackrabbit with antlers could really skate by unnoticed as long as he wasn't jumping up and down in front of everyone. Then again, no one seemed to give a fuck when he'd gotten robbed earlier that week, why would any of them care about him now?

He chuckled, imagining the Lewises putting up some kind of reward for him.

"Fuck yeah, hope the second time they have to buy me it's even more expensive," he thought to himself.

With all of his belongings crammed into a shopping bag he'd taken from Melody's dressing room, Marcus still had no goddamn idea where he was headed. Worse, he had nearly nothing to his name. Maybe enough to get a room for the night, but then what? He stopped at a corner, looking first at the street in the direction he'd been walking, then along the cross street. Both options seemed equally fruitless. There was nothing waiting for him in whatever direction he could choose to go.

Eventually, he ended up overlooking the harbor again, just from a different angle. He stared out at the water for a few moments, just trying to force himself to come up with something. Some plan, some idea. The jackalope sighed, staring straight down at the water and only barely able to see the reflection of himself in it. That was almost normal. Seeing himself, but only barely. A blurry image. He tried to keep his thoughts from going darker as he gazed downwards, imagining himself swapping places with that vague reflection, just vanishing under the surface, when a voice suddenly spoke to him.

"Thinkin' about a ssswim?" it hissed.