A loud pawing at his bedroom door woke Lysander the next morning. Outside, a chorus of birds sang to the morning. His eyes felt glued shut and he rubbed them, noting how scratchy and raw the skin around them felt from all the crying he did the night before. His cheeks also felt stiff, and he was sure he looked a mess. Forcing himself out of his bed, he slumped into his bathroom and splashed water on his face, giving his hair a quick finger comb so he would look halfway human before facing Red. Then he crossed back and opened the door for Bingley, who immediately started jumping all over him.

What he didn’t see was Red. He peeked into the kitchen to see if she was hiding in there, even though it was nonsensical--he just had to make sure she was actually gone. When no sign of her magically appeared there either, he shook his head and had a brief moment where he wondered if the events of the night before were some kind of terribly realistic nightmare. But no, he saw one of his glasses stacked neatly in the kitchen sink, a faint impression of Red’s lips visible just on the rim. She must have helped herself to a drink before departing. Then, another perplexing thing occurred to him when he realized that she had to have left through his back door, hopping the tall wooden fence that bordered his small bit of garden.

Odd, but then again, Red never made much sense to him.

While he stood in front of the sliding glass door, a knock sounded from across the room. Quirking a brow, he figured she must have come back after doing a sweep around the area or something, but instead of her statuesque figure standing across from him when he opened the door, it was Ramon’s bulk that greeted him.

“Oh, hey,” Lysander welcomed the other man, stepping back to allow him to squeeze past into the space.

“She still here?” Ramon asked, glancing around the room similar to how Lysander had done just ten minutes previous. His friend looked bodily exhausted, eyes hollow and dark with sleeplessness and cheeks and chin unshaven, and Lysander guessed Ramon had rushed over after tossing and turning fruitlessly for a few hours.

“Uh, no. She ducked out at some point, I guess,” Lysander replied, glad for the cold water he had washed his face with as it had woken him up enough for this conversation.

“Good. I don’t trust her,” Ramon grumbled.

“Yeah, I got that last night.”

“She’s hiding something. I don’t know what, but she knows more than she’s letting on.”

“Yeah, maybe,” Lysander offered, the empty platitude coming easy as he didn’t really want to participate in this discussion.

“I’m serious, dude. Don’t drop your guard with her, okay?” Ramon said while pointing firmly at him as though affirming Lysander’s attention.

“Honestly, I’m surprised you came back. You always made sure to let me know how much you didn’t want to be involved in any dangerous stuff,” Lysander mumbled, changing the subject. He both did and did not want to discourage Ramon’s involvement in the whole affair--both craving the companionship and loathing the idea of putting another person in the path of potential harm.

Sighing, Ramon scratched his scalp and looked away from him, “Yeah, I did say that a lot, huh? Look, I didn’t want to be knee deep in this shit, but it’s not like I got a choice anymore, y’know? I’m not about to just let you deal with it all on your own after that crazy shit last night.”

Closing his eyes and exhaling long and loud from his nose, Lysander released a gigantic stone of tension from his stomach, Ramon’s hands holding up just enough of the weight of the mess he was in to make it manageable. Knowing he wasn’t alone eased him in a way that made him once more crave the comfort of his bed, his knees feeling much more like jelly than joints.

“I, uh, appreciate that. If you’re sure and all,” Lysander managed after a moment of arguing with himself over whether to try to talk Ramon out of helping him.

Ramon rolled his eyes and gave Lysander a good natured slap on the side of his head. “Yes, I’m sure. Idiot.” The insult came out under his breath while he shook his head.

A puff of laughter escaped Lysander’s mouth, a barely substantial symbol of levity. “Do you want some breakfast? I haven’t eaten yet.” He wasn’t sure how much he would be able to hold down, but the only acceptable breakfast option he still had was oatmeal, which he should be able to handle.

“Nah, I snagged a cinnamon roll from the panaderia before I came. I needed the sugar, man.”

“No kidding. I’m still jealous you live above a bakery.”

“Listen, you still gonna go through with this whole thing tomorrow night?” The jovial atmosphere was sucked out of the room at the question.

Tugging at his forelock, Lysander ran through the options in his head. He could either plow on with the plan, even now knowing the risks he faced, or he could back out and allow Joseph to move forward with the closure of the suburbs uncontested. When presented like that, he didn’t really think there was much of a choice. All the reasons he had for starting this were still there. Besides, there were innumerable motives Anthony could have for trying to have him murdered. Doing nothing about Joseph wouldn’t necessarily solve that problem. “Yeah, I think I have to.”

Ramon squeezed his eyes shut and groaned, “Fine. I figured you would. But after it’s all over, we’re gonna have to have a serious chat about what to do about the whole ‘your uncle wants to murder you’ thing. We need a plan. That is, if we’re not already dead by then.”

“So pessimistic,” Lysander teased, though he also had doubts about living for any amount of longevity. “Red will protect me at least until then.”

“That is a truly baffling amount of faith you have in her, but whatever. I’m not gonna rehash my feelings about it. Just, stay here as much as possible, yeah? I’ll be here Monday morning to hear how it all went and to discuss what to do next, alright?”

“Okay. Thanks, man,” Lysander said, wondering what they could possibly do to thwart Anthony. Though maybe with Joseph’s change of heart, he would be willing to help Lysander out and talk down his crazy brother. Weirder things had happened, and it wasn’t as if Joseph particularly loved the way Anthony did things. They would figure it out, together. And wasn’t that a lovely word? To have Ramon to fall back on and plot with truly did a monstrous amount for Lysander’s confidence.

With that, Ramon was gone, muttering about getting some more sleep now that he knew Lysander was still alive.

Almost as soon as the door closed behind Ramon, Red squeezed in through the back, the sliding door whispering open just a crack to fit her body.

“What the hell?” Lysander asked, watching her nonchalantly make herself at home in the kitchen, refilling the glass she had left in the sink with more water. She was still dressed in the same outfit from last night--form-fitting black leggings, a plain dark grey hoodie, and her standard pair of thick soled Doc Martens. Her long auburn hair was freshly French braided, hanging down her spine. Other than the long tear in the sleeve of her hoodie exposing a scabbing gash in her arm, she looked refreshed. Clearly she hadn’t gone far when she left. Unlike Ramon, her eyes were alert and shining, though the shadows under them belied this appearance. “Why did you even leave?”

“Sorry, I was scoping things out around your place and I saw Ramon heading over. I didn’t really feel like dealing with him, honestly,” she answered, leaning back against his kitchen counter and sipping her water.

“Oookay, I guess that’s fair enough,” he replied, “He didn’t really seem too thrilled at the idea of seeing you either.”

“Figures. What a mother hen,” she said with a laugh, clicking her nails against the glass in her hand.

“He told me not to trust you,” Lysander admitted. After the soft moment they shared in the dark between the wall of his apartment, he felt he owed it to her somehow to share Ramon’s skepticism.

“Yeah, and?” she asked, the words coming with force before she continued in a more unsure tone, “Do you agree?”

He took a moment to consider the question. His immediate response was that he didn’t, couldn’t, distrust her to the same extent that Ramon seemed to. Even after only knowing her for two weeks, she had burrowed under his skin with all of her flagrant stalking and impertinent questions and insights about his life. Plus, she had taken up his cause with little more than a half formed idea from him. In his most desperate moment, she had been there. “No,” he said finally, “I really don’t.”

She assessed him, her eyes roving his face for any falsehoods. At last, she nodded, “Good. Let’s get out of here then. I think we both deserve a day off.” She pushed off from the counter and waltzed over to him. “You’re gonna wanna change your clothes, maybe shower. You look a mess.”

Self-consciously, he glanced down at his attire. He had fallen asleep in his clothes, unfortunately, and now his jeans and forest green cardigan looked rumpled and wrinkled. “Is it even safe to leave? Ramon said I should lay low here.”

Rolling her eyes, she replied, “Yes, it’ll be fine. Not many people are gonna attack you with me right next to you. The dude last night was a fluke.”

“Where do you even want to go?” It’s not like they could just take a stroll to the local movie theater or anything. The closest form of entertainment they had was the library, and that didn’t really make for a riveting day off distraction.

“Nowhere special. I thought we could maybe take a walk by the lake.”

“But it smells like dead fish,” he complained.

“Oh well, in that case, you pick, you oversized potato,” she scoffed, “C’mon, it’s not that bad. Plus, it still looks relatively normal this close to the city.”

He didn’t know what she meant by that, but the Spread must be a lot crazier on the environment than he thought. “Alright. If that’s what you want, then that’s fine.”

Smiling, she ushered him into his own bedroom, urging him to get ready quickly. Feeling a bit overwhelmed, Lysander changed his clothes but forewent the shower to save time. Giving his hair another comb through--this time with an actual brush--slathering on a layer of deodorant, and brushing his teeth, he declared himself ready for the day. When he exited his room, Red sat waiting for him surrounded by all his pets.

“I fed them for you,” she declared, which explained why all the cats were rubbing contented circles against her arms and legs. Bingley just looked happy to be included.

“Thanks. I’m glad there’s still someone out there who’s willing to sell me food for them,” he said.

“Oh yeah? Some hapless fisherman or hunter or something trying to make a buck?”

“Yeah, used to run a mill that sold birdseed and gardening things along with the pet food and treats, but obviously there’s not much need for all of that anymore. I think he still makes a decent living selling feed for livestock though.”

“Makes sense. Hey, why don’t we bring the dog? He’ll love it,” she suggested. Bingley’s ears perked up, as though he knew they were talking about him, and Lysander caved, knowing he didn’t have the heart to say no now that Bingley seemed excited.

“Um, do you wanna borrow a different shirt?” he asked, seeing again the giant tear in her hoodie.

Looking down to her own arm, she blinked at it. “Oh, right. Sure! Can I have one of your sweaters? You always look so cozy.”

“Sure?”

“Awesome.”

Grabbing the smallest sweater he owned--a navy blue cable knit he had gotten from Miria for a Christmas several years ago--he tossed it to Red. She caught it and brushed past him and closed herself in his room to change. A quick minute later, she was done and posing exaggeratedly for him in the sweater. It dwarfed her, as he had known it would, and it had begun pilling from both age and overuse, but it would do for one day.

After leashing up Bingley, the two left the apartment and headed north toward the lake. One of his favorite things about living so close to it was that he could always orient himself directionally--the water worked as a budget compass. It took them around half an hour to get to the park that bordered the water’s edge, and the conversation barely flowed largely because he didn’t know what to talk about with her when they were in public. The weather was relatively nice for a spring Ohio day--the sun shining bright and the air crisp with a breeze that grew stronger the closer they got to the lake--so a lot of people were taking advantage of it by taking walks and going on bike rides, kids playing outdoors with friends. It was the sort of day that made it easy to forget certain harsh realities.

As they entered the park, crossing through the opening in the chain link fence that once flowed into a parking lot, a fierce wind off the lake tugged at Red’s braided hair and tossed several loose strands into her face. Yet more people lazed about the grassy expanse in front of them--families clustered around picnic tables and children running havoc on the old wooden playground equipment. Lysander tightened his grip on Bingley’s leash as the dog tried to run toward the kids to join in the play. Passing the long pavilion where the park used to hold live entertainment in the summers, the pair descended the rickety wooden stairs dug into the cliffside that led down to the rocky beach. Already the overwhelming scent of the water hit him--a noxious mix of dead fish and the unique smell of the churning waves of Lake Erie--but Red looked more relaxed in the atmosphere, leading him onto one of the several cement wave breakers. The tide crashed around their feet, but the water was low enough at the moment that their feet didn’t get wet though a fine mist quickly coated his face and hair. Red sat toward the end of the breaker, legs crossed, and Lysander joined her, letting Bingley off the lead. The dog took the opportunity given to sprint off down the beach chasing a hapless seagull. The lake water was still too cold to swim in, so thankfully not many people had wandered down there and they could talk more freely.

Tucking her hands into the too-long sleeves of the sweater, Red watched the waves roll around them. “When I was little, I thought it was an ocean,” she said finally.

Lysander chuckled at the sudden comment. “Me too, actually. Miria and I liked to pretend we could see Canada on the horizon.”

A small smile curled at the corner of her mouth. “What, that’s not Canada right there?” she said, waving her hand out into the distance where the sky met the water in a hazy line.

“Probably not,” he said with an exaggerated shrug and disappointed sigh.

Another silence fell between them, broken only by the sounds of the seagulls crying while Bingley barked at them. “How different does it look on the other side?” he asked, voice pitched low just in case someone happened upon them. From where they were sitting, they could see several pylons stationed in the lake, the Barrier shimmering faintly between them. Every so often, a Barrier Patrol boat would pass, the chugging sound of its engine cutting through all other noise. On the far side of the Barrier, the lake looked much the same, gray water beating a path to shore, birds soaring back and forth over the line. Truly, he could barely even fathom that some unknown something was sweeping even now over the Barrier, pushing against every inch of it. No one really knew much about the Spread, other than that it definitely existed and that it warped everything it touched and shifted or sickened every living thing.

“I mean, everything is mostly pretty chill this close to the Barrier. I think probably because the nearest Rift is kinda far away, so the Spread hasn’t hit full force yet. The farther you get though...It gets pretty weird, friend,” she admitted.

“Weird how?”

“Granted I haven’t gone far, but even still I’ve seen some incredible things: trees that grow upside down, their roots growing into the sky like they’re trying to get to the sun, rivers that glow at night like they’re lit by their own personal spotlights, animals two times the size they should be, species that shouldn’t even exist just roaming around like it’s no big deal. It’s just pure magic, Lysander. I can’t describe it any other way.”

His breaths came more labored now, his mind pulling him in ten different directions.

Magic.

He thought about what a force like that could do to a human.

He remembered Red dancing around while a man sliced at her with knives. He remembered her throwing a knife with pinpoint accuracy into that same man’s chest after moving faster than a person should be able to move. He remembered that she had somehow carried a guy her size several miles to the other side of the Barrier.

“What...what did it do to you?” he asked. His fingers shook in his lap, the implications swimming around as half-formed ideas in front of his eyes.

“Honestly, I don’t really know,” she said softly, still not looking at him, eyes fixed on that murky distance. “I was always really athletic before, y’know? But it’s like I’m more now, faster, stronger, more graceful. I mean, that’s all well and good because it’s great for my job, but it freaks me out too because I can’t really remember when I changed. I just did. And it’s the same for Noah, but also kinda different. His whole thing is that he has a photographic memory, so he can remember literally everything he’s ever read or heard, and he can teach himself any skill that he’s either read about or seen once. And it’s like that for any Shifted, really, but everyone has something different, so we don’t really know how or why it happens that way.”

“Holy shit, what?” he muttered. It was all so much--too much--to believe, and he was floundering, thoughts still going in circles that led back to the same base thought of ‘oh my god, magic is real’.

There were real, honest to god, super powered people out there, and he was just now finding out and it felt like he was the witch and Red was Dorothy dropping a house on his head.

“That’s the difference between a Shifted and a normal unregistered exile,” she finished, turning her head to face him at last. His sight caught on somewhere in the middle of her face while he tried to parse through the momentous amount of information she had just presented to him.

“So...so, it doesn’t happen to everyone?” he asked, imagining the poor people who lucked out of getting any magical powers grouped together and covetously watching some other guys literally fly around or shoot fire from their hands. He felt sure he would be in the first group, if it ever came to that.

“No. As far as we can tell from talking to other Shifted and from our own experience, when you get out there into the thick of it, you either change or you die, though the change isn’t always super obvious,” she answered.

Blinking, he rearranged his earlier fantasy, and it became a bit more like a nightmare. “Oh,” he said, the word coming out barely voiced, just a brief exhalation of sound. “But, then, how do people not know about this?”

“What do you mean?”

“Like, why is everyone just in here living their everyday lives without knowing that magic is apparently real? Like, how is that even possible? Someone in the know has to have tried to tell everyone.”

Red eyed him as though trying to decide whether to answer and seemed to come to the conclusion that he deserved to know. “In for a penny, in for a pound, I guess,” she mumbled before continuing at regular volume, “You’re right that there have been others who’ve tried to tell people about all this, but the Barrier Patrol always cuts it off at the head by getting rid of anyone who shows even an inkling of knowing about what it’s really like out there.”

She tried to say it delicately, but Lysander still couldn’t fully wrap his mind around it. He had had an easier time adjusting to the idea of magic being real than this--that Anthony Campbell was out there, maybe even now, systematically killing people who knew about life outside the Barrier. As much as he knew Anthony to be somewhat off kilter, Lysander had never thought the man actually capable of such a dark deed, even after learning that Anthony apparently had it out for him.

“Joseph can’t possibly know about that,” he said firmly. “After all this is over, we can work on fixing that too.” And as he sat there with her, the water lapping around them, he felt truly limitless, like anything was possible. The hope rising in him was almost suffocating in its potential.

“Mm,” she murmured, her focus shifting inward.

“Penny for your thoughts?” he whispered, not wanting to interrupt her reverie but needing to talk this through with her.

“Hm?” she began, not fully registering his question yet, “Oh, it’s nothing really, just thinking about the past.”

-

She remembered:

Her mother trying to feed and clothe and house them on her own without even a shred of survival know-how, meeting a family of four--a complete unit that simultaneously made her feel safe and made her inexplicably furious--spending too much time alone with the other two kids--Noah and Tessa, twins with a relationship she struggled to find a place in--challenging her new friends to races and always winning, practicing what she remembered from gymnastics and never misstepping, even when she practiced skills she didn’t fully understand (when her mother finally caught her, she screamed at her until her voice went raw, pure terror that she could have broken her neck lining all her words).

She remembered:

Wondering when she would get sick, remembering all the horror stories that went around her school about the world beyond, not even realizing that as she wondered and played, her mother grew weaker and weaker, not realizing until it was painfully obvious and her mother was gone.

She remembered:

Noah rattling off every poem from the E.E. Cummings anthology his mother carried as a reminder of normality, a book he had only perused once, then a mostly normal day with the exception of young Tessa foolishly stepping onto an impossibly sized mushroom that sent out a cloud of noxious looking yellow gas at the assault, but instead of being consumed by it, Tessa stood untouched in the center as it flowed around her.

And she remembered finally becoming suspicious about her own knack for moving faster and better than everyone else she had ever met.

She remembered it all in the space of a breath, between one blink and next, her throat constricting minutely from the surge of emotions.

And then she moved on.

Lysander barely remembered the rest of the day--the walk home and Red leaving blurred together in his head, the sound of Red’s voice as she casually told him that magic was real echoed and blocked out anything else. After she had dumped all of that information, a couple had made their way down to their temporary sanctuary, and they had had to leave off from the serious discussion for fear of being overheard. He vaguely recalled Red wrangling Bingley, who had taken the opportunity to jump all over the newcomers, before she had shuffled all of them up the stairs and toward his home.

As Red left, still wearing his sweater, she turned to him with an incomprehensible look on her face, and said, “We’ll meet again soon, okay?”

She had never expressed any hesitation about meeting times, but he figured she was thinking about the monumental task ahead of her and that the next time she saw him would be just before they tried to change the fate of their city.

“Yeah, ‘course,” he mumbled, still preoccupied with sifting through his thoughts.

“I’m gonna work this all out, friend,” she vowed, and again Lysander was struck by the note of peculiarity in her tone and again he brushed it off because he thought he understood it.

“I trust you,” he said. Red nodded, her eyes leaving his face as she turned away.

“Good,” she replied, the monosyllable leaving her mouth as she walked away.

The next thing he knew he was being woken up by the loud shrill of his phone ringing. Bingley whined from the living room, having been disturbed by the uncommon noise. Lysander felt confused first followed quickly by a rush of fear as the knowledge filtered into his half-awake brain that no one would call him unless it was absolutely an emergency. Launching out of his bed, he ran out of his room and answered the phone with a breathless greeting.

All he heard on the other end of the line at first was sobbing, and his stomach tightened unpleasantly, a stone settling deep in his gut. “He-hello?” he repeated, mostly trying to get whoever it was to start speaking to him and put him out of his misery.

“Lys,” Miria choked out finally, and the fact that it was Miria calling him sent him deeper into a panic, “Oh god, Lys, Dad’s dead.”

The last word came out as a whisper as though she thought saying it louder would invoke the reality of it more strongly.

But Lysander didn’t need it to be said at full volume to get the full impact of the words, and with them, a deafening ringing in his ears. Images flashed before his eyes: Joseph arriving to his parent’s house after their funeral and telling him that he would take care of everything, would ensure that Lysander would be safe now, Joseph teaching him how to ride his bike, his strong fingers steadying him, Joseph pushing him through school and then offering him a job at his company when Lysander faltered with a career path, Joseph’s fingers just yesterday laying heavily (and warmly, and he couldn’t stop himself from the realization that they would never be warm again) against his hair.

The phone slipped from his listless fingers and thudded to the carpet.