Chapter 25: Do No Harm

  No. No syringes. Bad. Someone shook Miya’s shoulder. She flinched, though remained curled up in a hospital chair. Bad. Go away. Distant talking drifted through her conscience.

  Someone poked her in the cheek. “Come on, Pokey. Get up.” Another poke to the cheek. “Pokey.” Another poke. “Pokey.”

  Miya shot upright, now fully awake. One of the triplets jumped back, out of the way of her reflexive punch. They locked eyes for a moment. No orange eyes. Then he stepped forward and poked her in the cheek again. “Pokey!”

  She slapped his hand away. Which one are you? He kept his left hand shoved in his pocket. Fuck it. “Ben or Rob, I will kill you,” she said.

  “Doctor from Amanda’s surgery is ready to talk,” Ben or Rob responded, a small half smile hovering on his face.

  Oh. Miya got up to follow him as he left, stretching her neck to either side to work out the kinks from sleeping in a chair all night. “Is she still alive?” asked Miya.

  “Yeah. Doc wasn’t smilin’, though.”

  Miya nodded and took stock of the waiting room. The other triplet slept in another chair, his head leaning all the way back. His left hand had all of its fingers.

  “Not going to wake up Rob?” she asked Ben.

  “Tried. Couldn’t. He wasn’t jokin’ when he said he barely slept since we got here. Come on, doc’s waitin’. Chris an’ the others are already there.” Others? Oh, right, the Watch.

  He led her a short distance through a bland hospital hallway. Miya glanced around at the quiet, sterile surroundings. She bit her lip. I don’t like this place. She looked over her shoulder. What am I even looking for? There’s no one else here.

  “Here it is,” said Ben, bringing her attention forward. He pulled the door to the doctor’s office open.

  Miya stopped short of the doorway. Even though the weak morning light came in through the shades of the third story window, the bright white lights in the ceiling washed over everything. Miya’s nose tingled from the scent of antiseptic. Her eyes darted back and forth. No scalpels or anything, right? Why is this room so small? Chris and Roach leaned against a counter in the office. Quarrel sat on a chair, spinning a small gear on the side of her crossbow.

  “Thank you for joining us,” said the doctor, behind a small desk. He glanced at Miya, still outside the doorway. A small frown formed beneath his thin goatee. “You can come in.” As if on cue, everyone seemed to look at Miya. Right, move.

  She jerked a nod and found a second office chair between Quarrel and Roach. It creaked as Miya twisted it a couple inches to either side. Roach grabbed the backrest, cutting off the next twist and creak.

  The doctor placed his clipboard to the side and turned to the assembled group. “Your friend’s condition has stabilized,” he said, his voice calm and matter of fact. “We stopped the worst of the internal and external bleeding, and removed the bullet fragments from her abdomen. As well, we have put her in an artificial coma for now, she will require at least a couple more surgeries. I have been using magic to help the healing process, and the worst is past, but she is by no means in the clear right now.”

  The room remained silent for a moment. Miya closed her eyes. She’s not going to die. She’s made it this far, she can’t die now.

  Chris spoke up, bringing Miya back to the office. “Do you think she will recover?”

  “I am tentatively optimistic. However, it is too soon to tell,” responded the doctor. “If you are going to be waiting for her, I suggest you find accommodations. At the very least, it will be weeks before we will be able to release your friend.”

  Great. A gang of psychos wants us dead, one of us is almost there, and I have no damn clue where we’re supposed to go. Roach and Quarrel exchanged glances.

  “Doctor,” began Roach, his voice as raspy as ever. Oh, the language part of his brain is healed. Miya tuned out the rest of the conversation. Spent the whole ambulance ride over here speaking Nahua to me. Amanda on the fucking gurney, and he just kept trying to say something. Fucking beeping machine, fucking tiny room. Miya glanced around, looking for a black ball camera on the ceiling. Why am I looking for Control? She shook her head, as if to rid herself of the memories. I hate hospitals.

  Chris nudged her. “Are you alright?” he asked under his breath.

  “I’m fine,” she whispered back.

  “Sorry, but that’s the best I can do. You are lucky we had an unoccupied room, though I am not quite sure why none of you are using it,” finished the doctor with a small frown.

  “A friend of ours is in there. Because of their power they’re rather shy. But they still want to be nearby,” said Chris.

  The doctor nodded. Not the weirdest power based explanation in the world by a long shot. “Very well. But please let one of the secretaries at the front desk know when they leave. Another question for you. I try to avoid this sort of thing but the front office has asked me. Does your friend go by Amanda Broussard or Nicole Laffite? We found insurance cards for both on her person.”

  Chris and Miya exchanged looks. Ben shrugged when they looked to him. Why on Earth would she have two IDs? “What do you mean?” asked Chris.

  The doctor took in their surprise with little more than a small scribbled note. “We ask because Amanda is uninsured. Nicole wouldn’t pay a dime after five years of treatment.”

  “Then she’s Nicole,” replied Chris without an ounce of doubt or hesitation. I have no idea if this is insurance fraud or not. It probably is, but the doctor doesn’t seem to care.

  “Very well. Do you have any other questions for me?”

  “Nope,” said Ben. Chris shook his head. Ask what? Fucking nothing I can do, is there? Roach and Quarrel stayed quiet.

  The doctor nodded again. “If anything happens, we will let you know immediately.” Quarrel got up from her chair, signaling the end of the meeting. “Oh, and Roach, please speak with my secretary later,” added the doctor. Roach nodded as he followed Quarrel.

  “Excuse me, Miya?” said the doctor as Miya got up from her own chair.

  “Um,” began Miya, looking around. “Me?” How do you know my name?

  The doctor nodded. “You are the mage who performed first aid on Nicole, yes? May I speak with you in private for a moment?”

  “Sure.”

  Chris, who’d stopped in the doorway, said, “I’ll be out here.” She nodded. He closed the door behind him as he left.

  Miya turned back to the doctor and took her seat again. He leafed through some pages on his clipboard. After finding the page he was looking for, he said “What school did you go to?”

  “What, high school?” asked Miya, confused. “It was-”

  “No, no, where did you learn magic?”

  “Oh. I didn’t go to one.” The doctor studied her for a moment. Miya felt her hackles rise, feeling judged.

  Just as she was about to speak up to break the silence, he said, “That’s quite some magic you wove there. What was your thought process behind it?”

  “My friend was shot and dying and I needed to make it stop. I didn’t know what else to do.” She stopped as a thought occurred to her. “You’re a mage too?”

  He nodded and said, “There are some things we will need you to undo.”

  Miya blinked. “What? What’d I do?” What did I fuck up now?

  “There are still powerful streams maintaining her heightened blood clotting. The others have dissipated, but those still remain. They will kill her if left unchecked.”

  “Kill?”

  The doctor’s brow furrowed. “Yes. Altering a specific part of someone’s biology like that is never good. If left unchecked, clots will form in her brain and heart and there will be no amount of medicine in the world that can stop it.” He looked askance at her.

  I’m an idiot. If I fuck up again I’m just going to kill her. “You don’t know how?”

  “I can, but there is very high chance something will go wrong. The original mage has far more influence over their magical streams than anyone else. You didn’t know that?” She shook her head. The doctor’s bloodshot and dark circled eyes stared at her for a moment, then he drew a pen from his pocket and scribbled something on his clipboard without a word. Silence filled the room.

  “What?” asked Miya after a moment. “I can’t try to heal her now, is that it?”

  “No. I will not risk more damage to her.”

  “You just said that anyone else trying to undo that would fuck it up.”

  “Yes. Yes I did.”

  “And you said that I could fix it. What happened to that?”

  “I don’t think you know how to. A living human is more complex than a golem. Healing is far more complex than destruction.” Oh, OK, jackass.

  “What the fuck are you trying to say?” Miya snapped, ready to jump out of her chair. “Don’t just sit there and condescend to me. My friend is about to die. I’m not just going to stand there and take bullshit from you if I can help it.”

  He leaned back in his chair. In a gentler tone, he said, “It was a very brute force method. There will be complications no matter what.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like I said, heart problems. Strokes, maybe seizures from clotting in the brain. At best you’ll be able to alleviate these risks, but not remove them.”

  Miya slumped and hung her head. “Hey,” snapped the doctor. “There is not a doubt in my mind you saved her life. I doubt she would have made it to this hospital if you hadn’t acted. What I am saying is you can’t take the same approach to reverse it. If you are serious about this, I can advise you.”

  Miya nodded. She drew in a shaky breath. “OK.” Don’t fuck up again. I can’t fuck up again.

  “Altering previous work is more complex than slapping a new weave down over it. The strength of the stream you placed in your friend is actually quite substantial, but that means extra care is required.”

  “You’re not going to scare me away from this.”

  “I apologize. I didn’t mean to criticize, but it is vital that you know what you’re going to have to do. You’ll hear an announcement over the PA for you when I am ready.”

  Miya nodded. “OK. Thank you.” The doctor returned his attention to his clipboard as Miya left.

  “Oh, hey, Pokey,” said Ben with a wave, leaning along with Chris against the wall. No Roach or Quarrel?

  “What did he want?” asked Chris. The three of them walked back to the waiting room.

  “Did I tell you I jacked up Amanda’s blood clotting?”

  “No, you didn’t,” said Ben.

  “OK. Well, I did. But now they need me to undo it.” They reached the waiting room with Rob still passed out on a chair. A tiny stream of drool escaped his lips.

  “You want breakfast? Got up early, picked up a dozen,” said Ben as he offered a box to Miya.

  “Sure, I’ll take one,” she said with a sigh as she collapsed into the seat opposite him. She sorted through the assorted donuts. “What’s this?” she asked, pointing to a log of a donut with a light brown glaze on top.

  Ben leaned forward for a good look at it. “Maple bar. Think it’s got fillin’ of some kind.”

  Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

  Fuck it, why not. Miya chowed down on the donut. She blinked. That’s a lot of sugar.

  “Don’t they have a cafeteria? That serves real food?” asked Chris.

  “You wanna get up an’ find it?” asked Ben with a smile.

  Chris shrugged. They all settled into silence. Miya finished off the donut after a minute and looked around the waiting room. Quiet. Too quiet. Lights are too bright. Smells wrong. Miya tapped on the armrest of her seat. I hate this place. We’re going to leave soon. We have to. Thank god. She rubbed her hands on her pants, trying to get the sweat off.

  “What time is it?” Miya asked the others in a rush.

  “Eleven. Why?” asked Chris, looking up from his phone.

  “I don’t know. We haven’t told Olivia anything yet. Think she’ll want donuts?” Ben burst into laughter and passed the box to her without a word. I need to do something besides sit here. Anything besides that.

  Miya strode off to the spare room Roach had wrangled from the hospital staff and knocked on the door. After a silent minute, she hit the door again, putting a bit more force behind it. Come on, Olivia. Wake up. I don’t want to shout in a quiet hospital hallway.

  “Um, hello?” Miya strained to hear Olivia’s response through the door.

  Miya checked both ways down the hallway. “It’s me, open up. There’s no one else nearby.”

  The door cracked open, just enough for Miya to slip in with the box of donuts. She blinked once she got in.

  “Hi, Miya,” said Olivia as she draped a wing over Miya’s shoulder. Never a forceful speaker, she sounded even more subdued than normal.

  “Hey. I wake you up?”

  “A little.”

  “Would some donuts make it better?” Miya offered the box.

  “Oh! Can I have the cinnamon one?” Olivia asked, finally perking up a bit.

  “Of course. Don’t need my permission.”

  Miya glanced around at the darkened hospital room. The curtains were drawn over the windows, with a small couch built into the wall below. The ruffled sheets of the plain white hospital bed looked far cushier than what Miya would have expected. I kind of like it when it’s dark in here.

  “Is, um, Amanda’s OK, right?” asked Olivia. “She’s OK, right?”

  “That’s actually why I’m here. The doctor from Amanda’s surgery talked with us about ten minutes ago,” said Miya, taking a seat on the couch under the window.

  “Oh,” said Olivia. She put down her donut un-inhaled, concern written all over her face.

  “Yeah. They said she’s stable for now, and they think she’s going to make it.”

  “Think?”

  “Yes. They don’t know for sure.” Olivia wilted. “Hey, the doctor we talked to said he was optimistic.” Olivia nodded, her lower lip trembling a little. “Olivia!” snapped Miya, grabbing her attention. “She’ll make it.”

  “But, but,” Please don’t cry. I don’t think I could take it right now.

  “She’ll make it,” repeated Miya. What else am I supposed to say?

  “It’s like that cell all over again. I thought I’d never see you guys again. And now it’s happening again.” Miya got up and sat next to Olivia, on the opposite side of where she’d curled her tail.

  “The rest of us are still here, Olivia. And she’ll make it. The doctor has an MD in magical healing, if anyone can heal her, it’s him.” I think. “You can’t sit there thinking she’s going to die. You’ll drive yourself crazy.”

  Olivia took a deep breath and nodded. “Sorry,” she said with a sniffle.

  “Don’t say sorry. Just think positive. It can’t hurt.” Miya wrapped an arm around Olivia’s waist. Hugging her is a bit like hugging a pile of rocks. Olivia leaned on her. She seems happier with physical contact.

  Someone hammered on the door. “Miya, the PA thingy asked for ya,” said Ben.

  ***

  Two draining hours later, Miya stumbled back to Olivia’s room and knocked on the door.

  “Hello?” called out a man’s voice. Ben?

  “It’s me, open up.”

  Ben opened the door and stepped back to let Miya in. She immediately staggered in and collapsed on the bed next to Chris. Olivia curled her tail out of the way as Miya sank into the thick blanket.

  After a silent moment, Ben asked, “So, how’d it go?”

  Miya pulled her face from the bed and shook her head to get errants trends of hair out of her eyes. “Dunno,” she answered. “I’m not cut out to be a doctor.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Chris.

  “All the needles and equipment and shit. Everyone else knew what they were doing and I was just a monkey in the middle of it all. And Amanda was just lying there, completely out.” Is that what I looked like on Overlord’s cutting board?

  “Is, um, is Amanda OK?” asked Olivia.

  “Dunno. We’ll see.” Miya sighed. “She wasn’t in pain at least.”

  “What’d you do? You fix her?” asked Ben, whose face seemed to be grappling with curiosity for the first time in its life.

  Miya pulled herself into a sitting position and said, “I had to undo her blood clotting. I thought I was just giving her marrow a shove but its been hours and it kept doing what I told it to do. So I had to shove it back, but not too hard or she’d bleed out. I don’t know if that made any sense.” She resisted the urge to take the phone number the doctor had written and given to her, to double check if it was real.

  “Are you alright?” Olivia asked Miya as she draped a wing over her shoulders.

  “Tired. That was really hard. And weird. What have you three been up to?”

  “Watchin’ the news.”

  The two news anchors sat behind the desk with the news station’s logo plastered on the front. An image of a shouting man holding a handmade sign appeared on the upper right of the screen.

  The Asian man on the left began the report, “Welcome back. Protesters seized the city hall of Los Angeles last night, as well as two police stations and other municipal buildings. A similar attempt at seizing the MHU headquarters in the city was repulsed by officers there. After weeks of mostly peaceful protests against unemployment and the increase in the national security budget over healthcare and education, this move marks a radical change in their strategy. We go now to our reporter live in the field, Jonathan Marshall. John?”

  The TV cut to a man crouched on the floor. One hand held his mic, the other fidgeted with the shoulder of his black bulletproof vest. He looked up at the camera with a sheen of sweat on his forehead.

  “We’re here at the site of the protest,” the reporter said, his voice loud enough to be heard over the background noise. Something exploded, drowning out whatever the reporter said next. “However, calling this a protest is an understatement. A few minutes ago, the police began their attempt to storm the building.”

  The reporter continued, “The protesters have returned fire, and have begun preparing what appears to be a techie device.” The camera zoomed out and moved to the left a bit. Through a doorway, two people hunched over a sleek, gunmetal grey cylinder. One woman fiddled with something the camera couldn’t make out on the top; the other man rubbed his hands together.

  “What the hell?” Chris murmured under his breath. “That’s not a homemade techie thing.”

  The woman finished whatever she was doing and snapped a lid on the top of the device. The man grabbed the device and hefted it upwards. He moved out of the view of the camera. What’s he doing?

  The camera shook violently, then stabilized, looking out the window in time to catch sight of the device rocket out the window and collide with the ground. It blinked out of existence, Olivia couldn’t see a trace of it. Then three massive armored vans and dozens of officers on the street floated into the air, the gentleness at odds with the ongoing gunfire all around. People around the camera and reporter cheered.

  “What the hell?” said Ben, a serious look on his face. “Didn’t Roach an’ Quarrel say somethin’ about this?”

  “Shush, hang on,” interrupted Chris, his eyes glued to the TV.

  The gravitational distortion grew, catching a couple more officers and a car and sending them drifting helplessly upwards. Whoa. How is that possible? The screen cut back to the newsroom.

  The anchors reappeared, still smiling. “The National Guard has promised to restore order in the area,” said the woman on the right. Wait, what? What about the reporter? What about the fighting?

  “No, don’t fuckin’ move on. Fuck,” swore Ben at the TV.

  “The government doesn’t like news showing civil unrest,” said Chris with a sigh. “Unless its in a country they don’t like.”

  “Really?” asked Ben.

  “Yeah, the sergeants told us in training to not worry about cameras, someone somewhere would take care of them.” Miya snorted. That sounds about right.

  “Whoa, wait, what’s this?” said Ben, motioning to the TV.

  “The entire city of Mosul has vanished,” proclaimed the Asian anchor, his smile never wavering. The image above his shoulder showed a map of Iraq, with a dot labeled Mosul. “The city has been under siege from Lionhead for the last month. Lionhead has taken over Baghdad in recent weeks and seeks to expand their influence north.”

  Ben grunted. I think he said his other triplet was in Iraq. Olivia leaned into him, wrapping a wing over his shoulders. He leaned away, even as a small smile flickered on the corner of his mouth. Sorry.

  The news person continued, “US trained forces and Kurdish fighters had held some parts of Mosul in the last week. Now, however, US officials say that there is no trace of the city from plane or satellite imagery, and no contact can be made with people within.”

  “Um, Ben?” said Olivia.

  “Yeah?”

  “Why are the news people always smiling?”

  Ben gave a small frown and turned back to the TV. “Huh, never noticed that. They’ve always done that, I guess,” he said with a shrug.

  Olivia nodded, her frown deepening.

  Chris glanced at her and grabbed the remote. “Alright, I can only take so much depressing news,” he said as he hit the power button. “Food?”

  Food! “Yeah!” said Olivia, sitting upright. “Wait. Well, what about Rob?” she asked. “Shouldn’t we wait for him?”

  “Rob’s still asleep,” said Ben. “I’d give him some time.”

  “He can’t sleep forever,” said Chris.

  Ben nodded. “I’ll text him.” He leaned back to pull his phone out of his pocket.

  “Once the Watch is back we’ll chat and figure out what to do. They’ve been doing us a solid so far.”

  ***

  With too many people to comfortably fit in a single hospital room, Miya’s group and the Watch convened on the hospital roof that afternoon. Ben and a silent Rob leaned against a dormant air conditioning unit. The others spread out, a few taking a seat at the picnic bench. Roach and Quarrel managed to get them a patio with an umbrella to keep the sun off and a promise of privacy from the staff. Man, I knew people liked the Watch, but they’re just able to ask for people to bend the rules like this all the time without question.

  “So this is what it’s like on the moral high ground. The view is good, the air is clean,” Ben said to Roach and Quarrel, mirroring Miya’s own train of thought. Though I haven’t seen them chat for too long with anyone under middle age.

  Quarrel managed a smile. “You can join us!”

  “Yeah, I ain’t cut out for that.”

  “Speaking of which, we need to figure out what to do,” began Chris. “They don’t know when Amanda will wake up, let alone be able to move. Most of our stuff was packed into the cars when we had to run.”

  “Your cars will be long gone. The Tzontlis probably took everything from that warehouse and moved on. They didn’t really have an interest in that area before,” explained Quarrel.

  “So what are we doin’? What are you two doin’?” asked Ben.

  “Regroup,” rasped Roach. “Strike back.”

  “Not our fight. One of ours is already hurt,” said Chris.

  “Tzontlis made it our fight,” said Ben. “I don’t wanna take one of ours gettin’ shot lyin’ down.”

  “They have my fuckin’ truck,” added Rob, the first time Miya heard him speak all day.

  Chris ceded their points with a nod. “If we’re going to fight then what does that mean? Who are we fighting? What are we trying to accomplish? Can it be accomplished with Overlord robots trying to kill us?”

  “That attack was unusual,” said Quarrel. “Who was throwing that fire around?”

  “And the bots were different, too, not just the screamin’,” added Ben.

  “What do you mean?’

  “They didn’t run,” said Olivia, recoiling a bit when her soft words caught the attention of others. Before Miya, or anyone else, could prod her to elaborate, she took a deep breath and continued, “The one I fought before only took a few shots. It ran away whenever I got close, and it didn’t scream. The ones yesterday attacked first, and didn’t run. I don’t know if that makes sense.”

  “You don’t send two of anything into a pack of meta humans like Overlord did if you want to avoid losing them,” said Chris. “Are we high targets or are those bots more disposable than we thought?”

  “There was a mage throwing fire at us, too,” added Miya. “Could that have been the Baron? Come down from his high tower? He’s kind of a jackass.”

  “Yes,” agreed Quarrel. “But a neutral jackass. I can’t think of any reason he would throw in with a street gang. Tzontlis are just dumb muscle, for the most part. In January, they suddenly swooped down on a bunch of different little street gangs. Forced them in line, or slaughtered them. I can’t imagine that would work on the Baron.”

  “So he’s some fuckin’ nerd with a flamethrower?” asked Ben.

  “You’re not all that familiar with Aztecs and magic, are you?” said Miya. “If you have magic, you use it to fight. These mages aren’t with the usual universities and covens. Hell, some cults south of the border purposely infect their members with really bad strains of wildfyre.” Roach nodded in agreement with her.

  “Wait,” said Olivia. “What’s that?” she asked, trailing off.

  “You don’t know what wildfyre is? That’s like saying you don’t know what the black death is,” said Quarrel.

  “The what death?” asked Olivia, alarmed.

  “Wildfyre is a disease native to the Americas,” said Miya. “I think it wiped out about ninety percent of the mage population in the rest of the world. Europe, Asia, Africa, everywhere. It’s a bit like the flu, if the flu overloaded your metabolism and burned you out.”

  “Crippled the European mage guilds, right?” said Chris. “That’s why the tribes and reservations have some of the best mage universities in the country. Their mages weren’t all killed off at once, since they were able to fight the common European diseases better than the Europeans could fight wildfyre.”

  “Yeah. And you need a teacher for magic, a lot can’t just be learned out of a book. And… how did you know all that?” said Miya. I thought I was the one who knew all about magic.

  “Learn something every day,” murmured Quarrel under her breath.

  Chris’s brow furrowed. “I thought I said this. I took a couple history of metahumans classes as MHU electives.”

  “Ew, history,” said Ben with a fake grimace masking a grin.

  Chris shrugged. “Each to their own. I like history. There’s actually some theories about wildfyre and the Haboob.”

  “The who?” asked Olivia. Did he just say boob?

  “Heh, he said boob,” said Ben with a snicker.

  Chris rolled his eyes at Ben. “To answer your question, Olivia, a haboob is the Arabic word for a really bad sandstorm. The Haboob is a man who occasionally shows up throughout history and destroys everything. He was last seen sometime around 1920 and leveled a quarter of Istanbul singlehandedly. And-”

  “OK, OK, enough, back on track,” said Miya, cutting Chris off. I heard enough of that droning on the drive here. “As for why a cult would purposely infect themselves; if you survive wildfyre, it usually leaves you either a lot stronger or a lot weaker. Usually that last one. Anyways, back to the topic of what we’re supposed to do.”

  “I think we were talkin’ ‘bout the gang fellas an’ the Baron,” said Ben.

  “Yes, right,” said Quarrel. “They attacked MHU headquarters and killed five officers a month ago, and since then the cops have been very cautious with them. We were thinking, if we cut out the mages, the rest will be easy pickings for the police.”

  “Cops ain’t done that?” asked Ben.

  “Nope. Well, yes. When they tried that, it went south, fast. We think someone important is being paid off.”

  “Dumb,” added Roach.

  “Yes, they went in with a convoy, guns blazing. They didn’t meet any resistance, just snipers and bombs on the side of the road.”

  “Note to self, don’t do that,” said Ben.

  “We have no idea where the Tzontlis could be. The only known location we’ve staked out for a month. They stopped using it a while ago. We also have no idea why they started all this in the first place. ‘Because they could’ isn’t a good reason.”

  “You think a techie’s pride an’ joy don’t got a fuckin’ off the shelf GPS tracker? I know exactly where they are,” barked Rob, holding up a map on his phone.