"Yeah, I don't know. We could just ask Sadde more about her without telling them anything about you?"

"Yeah, we can start with that."

"Okay. I don't even know what to ask, what do you want to know?"

"How they knew how to leave the Sideways, I guess?"

"Okay."

Email to Sadde: I got to talking with the friend I'm helping out about my little Sideways adventure, and we're curious, how'd you know how to find Sideways exits?

No immediate reply.

"Anyway, uh, other than Bedlam craziness how're you? I noticed I don't really know a lot about you. Ummm maybe I should tell you a lot about myself first, uh, I'm twelve, my mom died when I was born but she and my dad used to map the Sideways so I started doing that, too, when I was little, because I wanted to understand. Dad and I don't have fixed places where we live, we move all the time to map this or that..."

"That's cool. I think I already mentioned I was locked up, I escaped from that back in the spring and I've been hiding since then. I wanted to go back and try to get the other kids out but I hadn't figured out how to keep them from getting sent back afterward, so I was working on that. That's why my cape name is Rescue, because that's what I was planning on doing with my power. And I'm fifteen, and I've had my power since I was seven or eight."

"Cape name? Like how Bruce Wayne is Batman?"

"Yeah. It's normal, where I'm from, everybody with a power picks a name like that. We usually have costumes, too, but I was still working on that part."

"...is Batman real in your world?" the idea occurs to her.

"Nope. But even in the stories he didn't have superpowers, really. There are some capes who are famous like that, though - Legend and Eidolon and Alexandria, mostly. Scion, too."

"What do they do?"

"Legend and Alexandria have powers like Superman - they can fly and they're really strong and tough. Legend can shoot laser beams from his hands, too. Eidolon can change what powers he has depending on what he wants to do. And then Scion is weird, nobody knows what's really going on with him, but he can fly too and he's the only one strong enough to stop endbringers, which are these big monsters that started showing up a while after the first capes."

"Cooool. How do people get powers, there?"

"Nobody really knows. Some websites about capes talk about triggers - like, something happens, and all of a sudden the person has powers - but nobody knows why or how that works. Powers do run in families, kids of people with powers end up with the same kinds of powers usually, but most of the time it just happens."

"Huh. No radioactive spiders or lightning strikes? I guess that's better."

"Yeah. I mean, I don't know if it's better, but it works pretty well. We end up with villains just as often as heroes, but lightning strikes would do that, too, probably."

"I guess."

Promise me you won't freak out, she finally gets the reply.

"One sec."

She thinks about it, and then sends, I won't freak out. You've been really nice to me.

So I have no idea how I knew that.

That's really weird.

Do you know how you got into the Sideways?

No. I don't remember. I am actually over fifty years old, but I got stuck in the Sideways for a long time.

Oh.

Are you okay?

I think there is a lot of stuff I don't remember about all that time.