As the corpse of the deer thundered to the ground, Noah rushed to Lexi. “Are you okay?” he asked while frantically looking her over.

She glared at him. “I’m fine. I think my hands might be a little bruised though,” she replied with a grimace. When she lifted her palms to show them, it was difficult to tell with the animal’s blood still speckled across her skin how severe the damage was. The rain continued to shower them, however, and it washed some of the gore away, making it visible to them that her palms had begun to turn mottled shades of blue and red. “Guess I should have dodged instead.”

“Ya think?!” Noah shouted. “You’re so careless!”

“Well, excuse me for saving your life!” she argued back.

“We would have been fine! We were out of the way! You just wanted to show off!” Noah continued.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa, let’s all just chill for a second, okay?” Ramon attempted to mediate.

“Why should I? She’s literally the only one of us who can fight and now she can’t even hold her weapons!” Noah ground out, his anger totally unabated.

Lexi rolled her eyes at this and said, “I’ll be fine.” At this, she tried to close her hands into fists, but Lysander saw a second of a grimace flash over her face.

“Maybe I can wrap it for you?” Lysander suggested. He had no idea if that would actually help, but he figured it was better than nothing.

“Sure, if that’ll make you feel better,” she acquiesced. “It should help with the swelling, anyways.”

As they made their way into the treeline and found a downed log to sit and treat Lexi’s wounds, Lysander noted that Noah still looked murderous as he paced around them. Meanwhile, Tessa remained silent. During the scuffle when the three of them fell, she had thankfully been able to maintain her bubble, but all of the excitement was clearly taking its toll on her concentration and she seemed to be trying to find a way back to whatever zen place she needed to keep her magic going.

Taking a seat on the rough bark of the log, Lysander again felt the back of his pants soak through from the wetness, the wood bloated and gummy from the rain. Lexi sat next to him, presenting her hands, which passed through Tessa’s barrier with no resistance. He wanted to ask how that worked but decided to wait until later when Tessa was more receptive to conversation. Lysander unearthed the first aid kit he had packed, which he had kept for emergencies but had grown dusty from disuse at his apartment. Whenever he injured himself, he had a tendency to forget about the kit’s existence and just buy more bandages, which cluttered up his medicine cabinet with half filled boxes and crusty tubes of antibacterial cream. Unzipping the kit, he pulled out the roll of athletic tape, which he had brought under the certainty that he would trip and roll his ankle or something. Delicately, he pulled her left hand into his lap and started wrapping up her palm using her wrist as an anchor. While he worked, he recalled how reticent she was to allow him to care for her in the same way only scant weeks ago when he had cleaned her bloodied knuckles. He had no real idea what had changed in her mind, especially considering his opinion of her had drastically swapped to a more negative aspect, but he was glad he didn’t have to fight with her about this.

Finishing up her hands, he convinced her to allow him to swipe some antibacterial ointment on the cut on her forehead from the deer’s hooves, which she consented to with another roll of her eyes. When he released her, she jumped to her feet and tested out the bandages on her hands, delicately flexing her fingers. Seemingly satisfied, she thanked Lysander and turned to Noah, who had taken to sulking nearby with his arms folded. “Alright, lead the way,” she directed.

“This whole thing is a massive waste of time,” he grumbled, unmoving.

“Yeah, well, bitching won’t get it done any faster, so chop, chop,” Lexi argued in return.

Visibly bristling, Noah nonetheless complied, pulling out the map and compass and beginning to chart their course under a thick cluster of branches that mostly protected him from the rain. While he did so, Ramon piped up, “Do all the animals out here just fucking attack people out of nowhere?”

“To be fair, they attack anything that moves. Something about the change that the Spread causes makes them a little crazy,” Lexi replied.

“Probably the pain of the mutation,” Lysander added, remembering the patchy fur on the deer’s body exposing stretches of veiny tan skin.

“Yeah, that tracks,” Ramon said. At that moment, a flash of red caught their eyes, and Lysander watched as a cardinal the size of a peacock took flight deeper into the forest, its plumage exaggerated and trailing behind it, making it look closer to a phoenix than any real living creature Lysander had ever seen. It skimmed the top of the trees and continued on, paying no mind to their group. “That was the most magical shit I’ve ever seen.”

Lexi raised an eyebrow. “The literal golden bubble around you didn’t do it for you?”

“Look, it’s been a long day,” Ramon began, “Let me have this.”

“It was super pretty,” Lysander offered in support.

“Thanks, man.”

“C’mon, this way,” Noah interrupted, pointing them down a partially worn path through the trees.

Lysander stood, his knees and feet protesting, and the group followed Noah, crunching over loose sticks and stray acorns. The further southeast they traveled, the more the land changed, gradually becoming hillier and making the walk more arduous as they tramped up and down. After coming upon a small river, Noah snatched Lexi’s dagger from her and washed the blood from it for her so she wouldn’t get her new bandages wet. As he did so, Ramon watched the pink swirls eddy away from them and quickly get broken up by the ripples of raindrops.

“Where did you get daggers anyways?” Ramon asked. The question seemed almost like an afterthought, as though he was entranced by the flow of the river more than the curiosity of the weapon.

“One of the camps back there,” Lexi replied, jerking her thumb in the direction they had come from. “There’s a guy who used to make medieval swords and do blacksmithing for the Renaissance Faires before the Spread, and he made them for me.”

This caught Ramon’s attention fully. “You found a fucking actual blacksmith?”

“Yeah. His Shifted ability has something to do with shaping metal or making metal or something like that. I didn’t really care about that, so I don’t really remember, but yeah,” she answered.

By this time, Noah had returned. “It was shaping. People donated metals they had from the city and he would make weapons for hunting and defense, remember?”

“Oh yeah, that’s what it was.”

The conversation sparked the memory of the guard from earlier. “Hey, speaking of weapons, what was up with that thing the BP guard had?” Lysander asked.

“Noticed that, did you?” Lexi responded.

“I mean, yeah, it was hard to miss.”

“It uses the power of the Spread, like the Barrier,” Tessa chimed in, finally having enough presence of mind to participate in conversation again.

“So what, it sucks in magic and shoots it at people? How does that work?” Everything Lysander learned about how the city used the Spread made little sense to him, especially given that he had never really noticed before. He had always just accepted that things worked because they were supposed to. The Barrier protected him, so why worry about how it did so?

Surprisingly, none of them had an answer to this. Lexi and Noah both turned to Tessa, but even she shrugged. “It’s a pretty rare technology right now, so I haven’t really seen it in action.”

“BP is pretty hush, hush about it, to be fair. They use normal guns in the city. I think they only really give those magic things to the Barrier guards to use against Shifted,” Lexi explained as they started moving again. Lysander only caught a small glimpse of her face as she turned away, but he saw a tension flash through the corners of her eyes briefly.

As the sun began to set, the rain finally let up and they started scouting for somewhere to rest for the night. Lysander overheard Noah quietly complaining to Lexi about their pace, and Lysander knew that they moved much slower because of him. After an entire day of walking, his body dragged heavily, making moving any of his limbs a chore, and he had begun plodding more than stepping, forcing Tessa and Ramon to follow his pace.

They crossed through a field overgrown with prickly weeds and grasses that tickled the small sliver of skin between his socks and the hem of his pants. Mud caked the entirety of his sneakers at this point, and he doubted the treads provided much traction with how full of gunk they had gotten. With the sun disappearing, the air grew chillier and insects swarmed around them, clouds of mayflies heralding both the season and the presence of yet another–or perhaps the same–river. The sounds of it burbling echoed not far in the distance.

Once across the field, Lexi declared a natural nook created by a group of boulders as a good place to make camp. Though it was too dark to see, the sound of the river had grown louder, and Lysander guessed they were only twenty or so feet from it. The spot Lexi had chosen had thankfully been mostly protected from the rain by a tangle of branches of several pine trees, though sitting amidst the browning needles that had fallen pricked him more than a few times. Through the fans of pine branches, Lysander could see stars poking through the falling darkness–pinpricks of light forming far off shapes in the sky. Having lived in the city his entire life, he had never seen them so clearly, and as the sky faded from indigo to full black and the last of the clouds that had hung over them all day drifted away, the universe above him felt both fathomless and infinite. He truly appreciated for the first time just how cloistered he had been, trapped behind the dome of his city and never being able to see anywhere or anything different. It was the price they paid to survive, and the cost of it alarmed him.

As they laid down, Tessa widened the bubble to accommodate for their legs stretching out, but this also meant that the height of it was greatly diminished. If Lysander sat up, the very tips of his hair would brush the roof of it, which made him feel slightly hemmed in even with the knowledge of its necessity. Rather than joining them in a full laydown, Tessa sat with her knees crossed between him and Ramon.

“I’m gonna meditate like this for a while. I shouldn’t fall asleep, but if you notice the bubble start flickering, just poke me or something,” she ordered, her eyes falling closed.

A ball of nerves jumped into Lysander’s throat until he saw the teasing smirk adorning her face. “Ha, ha, very funny,” he groused, “My life is a joke to you people.”

Ramon snorted out a laugh. “So dramatic. But in all seriousness, please don’t kill me, Tessa.”

“I gotchu,” she said and gave Ramon a tiny pat on his head.

Curling onto his side to face Tessa and Ramon, Lysander asked, “Did you know about any of this before today?”

“Some. My uncle’s been out here a long time, and he tells me some stuff.”

“Does he have an ability?” As far as Lysander understood from his interactions with Lexi, anyone who survived the sickness became Shifted, but he could admittedly be misunderstanding.

“I dunno, honestly. He told me that him and my cousin, Joleynie, don’t have any weird powers or anything like that, but maybe he just doesn’t know?” Ramon pondered. “Or he could just be not telling me about it.”

“He probably just genuinely doesn’t know,” Lexi interrupted, breaking off from the low conversation she had been having with Noah. “It’s not like every ability is super noticeable. I think most people figure theirs out on accident. Like, Tessa almost died from a poison mushroom but got saved by her barrier when we were kids.”

“Pity,” Noah murmured.

Ignoring him, Tessa chimed in, “Yup! Took me forever to figure out how to work it though.”

The small talk continued, but Lysander started having trouble following every thread of the conversation as his mind drifted into sleep. Eventually, everything became muted and his physical exhaustion carried him into dreams.

-

Lysander fell asleep first, his breathing evening out and deepening into quiet huffs, and Tessa was impressed at his ability to sleep outdoors. Ramon followed not long after, turning away and curling into himself, using his arm as a pillow. She knew from experience that his shoulder would be sore in the morning, but she had nothing better to offer him. Once Lexi eventually also drifted off, her back propped against one of the boulders and her legs covered by one of her blankets, Tessa cracked open an eye and found her brother glaring across their loose circle at her.

“Can we talk for a sec?” she whispered hesitantly. She didn’t want to push her luck, but Noah was also the only reason she was here. As noble as she thought Lysander’s goals were, she didn’t fully believe any of it would actually help. Things in their city were too deeply messed up for some bright eyed optimist to swoop in and fix now, so only a mixture of wanting to reunite with her brother and a niggling desire to do her part to help Lysander attempt to find a solution pushed her into this journey.

“I have nothing to say to you,” Noah snapped back.

Sighing, Tessa continued, “I know you think I messed up by going with mom, but I was only thirteen.”

Noah scoffed. “So was I!”

“Exactly. I didn’t think we could make it on our own. I thought you would change your mind and come with us.”

“Mom left Lexi and dad to die, Tessa. I never would have gone with her,” he said, his voice emphatic.

“She just wanted what was best for us,” she argued. It had taken her a long time to come to terms with her mother’s goals from that night and with her own decision, and she wanted Noah to understand her side of things.

“I don’t give a flying fuck what she wanted! What she did was messed up, and you just left me alone in the middle of nowhere. I thought you would come back. I waited for hours before I realized you had actually gone with that woman.”

“I–I’m sorry,” Tessa managed to get out through the lump in her throat.

Maybe she had only imagined that she had come to grips with it because she felt it all again now: the surety of Noah joining them, the pain of realizing he wasn’t, the loss of her twin and her father and her surrogate sister, and the guilt of surviving without them.

“Yeah, well, fuck you, Tessa,” he ground out before turning away from her and saying no more.

She spent the rest of the night in silence, her thoughts churning as fast as the waters of the river.