"This line is huge," Samantha murmured as they approached Basalith, close enough to view the people camped outside the city's limits.

The car bumped constantly over the uneven terrain where the road had been destroyed. While the way to Basalith was--despite the destruction--completely navigable, many people chose to wait for COTD to come to them, rather than go to Basalith directly. Why rush out to the undoubtedly burgeoning city when it was going to expand out in the next few days? Even so, traffic was terrible--while most people chose to wait in the comfort of their homes, just enough people chose to venture out to COTD's Mecca that Samantha needed to vigilantly watch for passerby.

She was struck by an unsettling feeling as she drove, the kind that comes when walking through cemeteries late at night, or traversing a dark alleyway. These huge streams of pilgrims--venturing by foot, bike, car, whatever--cast Basalith in the light of a safe refuge. That, of course, gave Samantha the sense that everyone was escaping from...something.

"This looks like a war zone," Brian observed as they crawled along. The damage to the surrounding terrain was visibly worse the closer they got to Basalith's towering green walls. It seemed to Samantha oddly ironic that people were leaving their idyllic towns for a literal battlezone.

Samantha gave him an incredulous look off to the side. "Hmm, I wonder why?"

"I know about the battle," Brian snorted, rolling his eyes. Who didn't? "But the shredded road wasn't what I was talking about. I was referring to the fact that this area has the semblance of a refugee state."

Samantha's hands tightened on the wheel. "Why?" She had been telling herself that her unease was unfounded. But if Brian also felt like something was amiss...

"This kind of exodus isn't unprecedented; people go on holy pilgrimages all the time," Brian noted as he watched a passing group of bikers. "Even so..." he trailed off. "In America in particular, people don't normally evacuate their homes. This scenario feels like it should be happening somewhere else."

Samantha nodded her head once in mutual understanding. It felt to her like they were in a foreign country, or a movie set. Just a few days ago, even last month, nobody knew of COTD. Life was simple, and humanity had a good grasp on its limitations and its future prospects. People are born, they live, and they die.

"COTD really has turned everything on its head," she muttered. "Here we were," she said, glancing in the overhead mirror at Avery, sleeping in the back, "worrying about Bath, and Avery...saving up for college."

"If COTD hadn't brought the panacea to everything, along with free housing, food, education..." Brian shook his head. "It's like someone woke up one day with the powers of a God and decided to make heaven on Earth." He rubbed the brow of his nose. "None of this makes sense. And how the hell are Bath and Lisa involved?"

Samantha shared Brian's frustration over their son's involvement in COTD. As far as they were concerned, he'd been at Alens for the past two months. Why, then, was he at Basalith, telling them to rush over? For what? To idle their car in a line wrapping for miles around Basalith's border?

Everything so far implied that Bath had some sort of way to get them into the city, which in turn implied that he held some form of...leadership in COTD. Samantha's mind swam as she drove, generating theories or explanations for Bath's connection to COTD.

She didn't know how she felt about him being a part of COTD. Everything about the mysterious organization left her, as a parent, extremely worried--would Bath be sent off to fight against someone and die? Furthermore, now that talks of a supposed "portal" leading to alternate worlds had been brought up, Samantha worried that Bath might be sent into one of these portals, only to disappear forever.

Of course Samantha recognized the amazing things COTD had to offer, especially the big-ticket benefits that Brian pointed out. But in all honesty...the most important thing to her were her children. If the COTD gave her a perfect life, but the cost was, eventually, the lives of one or both of her children...

In a sense, Samantha felt helpless in the face of COTD's sweeping domination of Earth. 'Everything has happened much too fast for me to get a sense of everything. For instance, the Dragon of the COTD said he could extend people's lives, but only did so as a reward for military service. Obviously, if the COTD increases the lifespans of our family, we should be endlessly grateful...' but Samantha believed, as a rule of thumb, that old adage, "If it seems too good to be true, it probably is."

COTD sounded like the biggest "too good to be true" ever. If they all could theoretically live forever, but died in just a few years from waging war, what was the point? The entire premise of the COTD, that a god came down from wherever to Earth, within the entirety of the vast universe, claiming that he was going to lead humanity across the stars...it simply didn't make sense. Why? Why come down to Earth, why consort with humanity, why lead them across the stars? Why do any of these things?

Samantha had been mulling over these questions for the past week or so, with little to show for her efforts. And now, as they approached the looming city ahead, her uncertainty and fear were coming to a boil.

"That's an odd sign," Brian suddenly remarked. Samantha, only half paying attention to anything other than the ground directly in front of her wheels, looked over to her right.

"Where? What?"

"It says, 3.6 miles away from Basalith...why 3.6?"

"It does seem completely arbitrary," Samantha admitted.

Samantha jerked up in her seat, hair standing on end, eyes wide. On her windshield, out of nowhere, appeared the following words: "Samantha McLane. Prepare for your car to be skylifted into the city. Seconds to lift: 59...58..." Every second, the digits on the counter changed. The message looked like the kind children leave in windows by smudging their fingers, only darker, like someone had painted in clear oil on the surface of the window.

"Brian," she croaked. "Brian!"

Snapping to attention, Brian looked her way. "What?"

"Do you see this?" she hissed. "On my windshield?"

"What...the hell," he finished, dumbfounded. "Airlift...?"

"What?" Avery grumbled from the back, eyes heavy-lidded, hair mussed up. "Why are you both yelling?"

"We aren't yelling!" Samantha roared. She exhaled loudly, then continued, "Avery, something impossible is happening."

Avery simply nodded. "I know. This is COTD territory." While Avery had been following COTD news coverage like everyone else, she'd been voraciously reading up on COTD ever since Bath called yesterday night imploring them to come. She'd consequently stayed up all night gathering information, leading to her sleeping through the whole morning. "The Dragon can do whatever he wants. Though what impossible thing are you talking about?"

"There's writing on our windshield," Samantha exclaimed. '22, 21...'

"Wait what?" Avery cried out, a thousand times more awake than she had been a few seconds ago. "What does it say!?" 'Is the Dragon...sending us a message?' Avery smiled inwardly to herself, heart thumping in her chest, butterflies whipping up a hurricane in her stomach. 'Is it...Bath?'

In all the material that Avery read on COTD, one thing clearly stood out in her mind: the Dragon's name was, in his own words, 'Bath.' If the Dragon had said something mundane like Tom, that would be one thing. But Bath...as far as she knew, her Bath was the only Bath. Moreover, being involved in COTD in secret, telling them to go to Basalith without any advanced notice...

However, perhaps most persuasive of all to Avery's young heart was her earliest memory. It was the kind of memory she always considered more of a vivid dream. It was hazy, and only lasted for a few seconds. If she had to describe it, the memory felt like a short Snapchat message with a bad filter.

But in that memory-not-memory, Bath lifted her up in the air and let her fly around her room. In all her life, after that, Avery had tried to dream of the same thing--of flying--but never could. She always lamented the fact that her dreams wouldn't cooperate with her desires, that the only time she'd ever get to really experience flying was in that snapshot memory.

Avery desperately wanted the memory to be real. She wanted her older brother to be the Dragon. She couldn't imagine her friends' faces if they saw her, sister of the Dragon, flying in the sky...standing at Bath's side.

Because at the root of everything, that's what Avery really cared about: why else would she try so hard in school, in sports?

"The message says that we're going to be airlifted in thirteen, no twe--eleven seconds!" Samantha cried out.

"He's coming for us," Avery mumbled in response, eyes wide with exuberant, almost disbelieving surprise. Then, louder: "It's really him."

"What? Who?" Brian asked, narrowing his eyes.

Avery lifted her face. "Who else?"

They spent the last five seconds of the car ride in silence, Avery's implied answer too impossible to speak out loud. Then, as the family members simply looked at one another with stunned expressions, the car jerked off the ground. Everyone in the car pitched forward, their seatbelts holding them in place.

"Dear God," Samantha said shakily. "This is actually happening."

Brian's eyes were absolutely glued to the window as he watched the ground rapidly shrink. "Yeah, I guess it is," he replied, voice detached. "Avery," he began, "do you honestly think...?"

"It's him," Avery said, eyes shining with confidence. "After all, there's only one Bath."

Not even a second later, a familiar voice rang out. "Why am I surprised that you're the only one to figure it out?"

"Bath!" Avery squealed. Samantha and Brian both felt a chill come over them. Samantha's knuckles were bone white on the useless wheel, while Brian's entire body quickly became pale as a sheet.

Then, suddenly, a tremor ran through the vehicle, as though it had been struck. Then, out of nowhere, the roof of the car began to peel upward, as though being pulled by something--or, more likely, someone. In the time it took everyone to breathe once, the roof of the car was gone. In its place was Bath, hovering in the air above them, with a crooked smile touching his gleaming eyes.

"I really missed you guys."