The next three days passed by in a lonely blur. The flannel brigade didn’t ignore Eli, of course- but they were busy, with experiments and security checks and forgeries. So Eli spent most of the time researching Santa Barbara apartments and trying to sort out what on earth he was going to say to his sister.

Three days later, he still hadn’t the faintest clue.

“Hey, Lily,” he muttered under his breath as he dressed. “I know you always hated my job. Good news, I left. Bad news, I’m dead.” He sighed. “Nope.”

No version of the news sounded any better in his head, and he walked towards the idling car in a dreary cloud of mixed thoughts. It took him a second to realize that the person sitting in the driver’s seat wasn’t Grim, but Ambrose.

“Oh.” He stopped, then finished ducking into the passenger seat. “Grim isn’t taking me?”

“I was trying to give them a break today,” Ambrose stiffened. “But if you’d prefer someone else, I can ask Sherry to-“

“No, no.” Eli closed the door. “S’all right.”

He almost smiled as he clicked his seat belt and settled in. The car was exactly the same as he left it several weeks ago. The coffee stain on the console was still there, as were the water bottles in the back. But this time, there were no restraints on his wrists, nor did he feel the burning need to glare at the driver throughout the ride.

“So.” Ambrose cleared his throat. “Your sister. Her name is Lily?”

“Lily Valenz,” Eli said. “Matriarch of the Valenz family, once my mom passed. Makes it her job to keep tabs on all the siblings.”

Ambrose went quiet for a moment, his arms stiff between his shoulder and the steering wheel. “You know, she can’t…tell your other siblings about this.”

Eli bit his lip. “I know.” He took a deep, ragged breath and scrambled for anything else to say. “What about you? You have family members out there somewhere?”

Ambrose’s fixed stare at the road softened. “Only the ones back in the cabin.”

#

Eli didn’t have time to fall asleep on this drive—Grim had arranged for his sister to meet them at an abandoned picnic area by the lake, not a half hour down the shore. Ambrose parked the car in a gravel park in sight of the water. On the opposite end, closest to the lake, a mini-van had parked at an angle. A short woman with black hair and a green sweater paced in front of it, twisting a bracelet on her wrist and glancing out at the lapping waves.

“I’ll stay here,” Ambrose started, “and let you—“

Eli was already out the door and running to the van.

“Lily!” he shouted. “Lily, I’m so sorry—“

She whirled towards him and gave a broken cry. It was all she could do before he slammed into her, picking her up in the tightest hug he could possibly give.

“I knew it,” she sobbed into his flannel shirt, her tone cracked and angry. “I knew you weren’t dead, I knew they were lying to me, the bastards…” She pulled away, scrubbing at the tears on her face with her oversized sleeve. In Eli’s view, she hadn’t aged since they were in school, and he was embarrassing her in front of her boyfriends. That had just been, what—last week? Last year? Certainly not a decade ago, that was impossible.

“I thought you might see through it.” Eli wiped at his own face, his chest tightening again. “Lily, I can’t—I don’t think I can really explain what happened, not without endangering you.”

She nodded, arms folded tightly against her ribs, refusing to meet his gaze with her own reddened eyes. “I figured.”

He folded his arms to match her. “You wanna say I told you so? Would that make you feel better?”

She laughed, sniffed hard, then kicked his shin. “I fucking told you so, Eli.”

He shuffled away from her second kick and gave her a crooked smile. “Feel better?”

“Lemme get a few more kicks in first.”

“Lil, come on.”

She grabbed his arm to keep him still. After another rabbit kick, she sniffed, tugged on his sleeve, and jerked her head towards the van. “You want to see the girls?”

Eli’s breath caught in his throat. “You brought them?”

They approached the van, trying to keep their footfalls as quiet as possible over the gravel. Eli set his hand against the glass to peer in. There they were- his two nieces, fast asleep in their car seats. They had inherited their mother’s black hair, held back in pink and green clips. Though their eyes were closed, he knew that one of them had hazel eyes, the other perfect dark brown. Liza loved crackers and rocket ships, Maria ice cream and dinosaurs. As he watched, Maria tightened her chubby grip on a little green stegosaurus- the one he had bought for her last Christmas.

“I knew they’d fall asleep during the drive,” Lily murmured behind him. “They’ll be devastated their missed their Uncle Eli, but…I thought you might want to see them before you go.”

Any restraint he had left was gone. He leaned against the van and sobbed, his shoulders shaking. Lily wrapped her arms around his waist.

“I don’t want to leave,” he choked out, “I don’t want to go, I didn’t want this—“

“I know,” she mumbled, tears running down her cheeks again. “I know you didn’t.”

It took him a moment to turn away and get a hold of himself, fumbling through several uneven breaths. As long as he didn’t look back at the van, he’d manage.

“Can you tell me where you end up?” Lily still had her hand on his arm. Under her sweater sleeve, he could just make out a peek of a bracelet, one made of bright pony beads and twisted chenille straws. He bit his lip hard.

“Maybe in a few months,” he mumbled. “I don’t want to take a risk. If the agency finds out that you know anything…” He placed his hand over hers. “But I promise I’ll reach out, as soon as I think it’s safe.”

They both watched the lake for a moment before Lily nodded towards the forest. “Can you at least tell me you’re with good people? They’ll take care of you?”

Eli looked over his shoulder. Ambrose was leaning against the car, arms crossed, trying to look anywhere except for their direction.

“Yeah,” Eli said. The smile he gave Lily, though trembling, wasn’t forced. “I am. And they will.”

#

They continued talking—about Lily’s work, about pre-school, about nothing at all—until the little ones in the van began to stir.

“Be safe,” were Lily’s last words, muffled against his shoulder, before she slid into the van.

“Love you.” He closed the door for her, then watched the van pull away, the tires coughing puffs of smoke from the gravel path. Once it was out of sight, he wiped his cheeks one more time and trudged back to the gray sedan. Ambrose had already started the car.

“I’ll give her a burner phone when you’re settled elsewhere,” he said quietly, avoiding Eli’s gaze. “You can contact her as soon as you feel it’s safe. I don’t know how long it will be before you can visit her, but I promise, we’ll do everything we can.”

Eli nodded stiffly—it was all he could manage. They rode the rest of the way in strained silence until the car rolled up in front of the cabin once more. Ambrose turned the car off, but neither of them made a move to leave.

“I know you don’t have a family,” Eli croaked, then cleared his throat, “but…I have to know. Did you have to leave anyone behind like this? When you started everything?”

Ambrose’s jaw tensed, and he kept a hard gaze on the middle distance in front of him.

“Yes and no. Not family, exactly, but…” He took a breath. “Years ago, I was selected to head a medical research team with Sherry. Icefall was still a new compound at the time, highly experimental. We were close to,” he paused, then waved a hand, “unlocking its full potential, to be simplistic. We even started meeting with patients for medical trials. People who would benefit the most, who had the least time and nothing to lose. I can’t emphasize to you how little time they…” He swallowed hard. “Then the state declared the substance illegal for outside use. Hoarded it for its own purposes, stole my team, and shut down our trials.”

He closed his eyes and took a long breath. Eli watched him pull every fiber of himself together to finish. When he began speaking again, his voice was hollow.

“I was the one to make the calls to the patients. Telling them we had been shut down, that the trials weren’t moving forward. It took days. Most of the families called me back, over and over, asking why. I didn’t…” He ran his hand through his hair, looking as if he had the phone in his hands all over again. “I made the calls, then spent the next week drinking. Thank God Sherry tracked me down, or…well. We joined Auxilium the next day.” Ambrose gave a humorless smile. “I’m sure you saw at least that in my file.”

Eli nodded, his throat dry. Auxilium was where Icefall’s file began.

“I know what I’ve done isn’t excusable.” Ambrose finally turned to look at him. “But I haven’t been able to go a single day without hearing those voices over the phone.”