On the journey out of the neighborhood, people had either ignored us or glared at Priya suspiciously.

The trip back in was different.

Over twenty of the rescue team were locals. I think most people were concerned, in an abstract way, about the safety of the hostages, but the personal connections between many of the rescuers and family or friends who’d stayed behind in Autumn Hills made certain that many were anxiously awaiting the group’s return.

As we turned onto Viridian, an older woman recognized a member of our group and started hollering back into her house.

“Honey, come look! They did it, they saved those poor people!”

Her loud exclamation was heard by more than just her husband. Several others opened front doors and came out onto porches. Someone gave a loud whoop and started clapping, and others followed suit. Several people came out to congratulate the rescuers and shake their hands, heedless of the rain and monsters.

We continued to gather people as we traveled, an impromptu parade and celebration, our escort nearly a hundred strong as we headed down Azure.

There was one former hostage - she must have been in her seventies or eighties, judging by the wrinkles in her face and her thinning gray hair - who’d been largely quiet as we’d traveled. I’d tried to engage her in conversation, but her responses had been guarded and terse. I’d been told she’d been offered a spot in the trucks, but had refused, accepting only the arm of one of the Living Legion to help her along. Her eyes were open wide now, her head twisting to look as person after person joined us.

“It’s real. Y’all are really still actin’ like people. It’s… it’s okay here?”

She directed her question not to me, but to one of the people who’d come out to greet us, a boy in his mid-teens.

He looked up at her, confused. “No. It’s not okay. There are tons of monsters! Badblankets and Leafenrats and Bladetails and those new chicken things.”

“But not…” She didn’t seem to know how to ask. Perhaps she didn’t feel comfortable asking such questions to a child. Instead, she stopped walking for a moment and turned, taking in the massive crowd. We’d picked up a few of the combat groups, so we had people of every age and description. Most were armed, with knives and bats and gardening tools. but few had armor that could withstand the falling rain. There were still a lot of bike helmets and leather jackets and a few people fortunate enough to have helpful sporting equipment - goalie pads for hockey, umpire’s vests, and the like - but people mostly looked like… people. Jeans and shorts, tank tops and T-shirts. More striking than clothes were the attitudes and expressions on people’s faces. Some were serious, watching our surroundings or keeping a close eye on children, but others were relaxed and laughing, hugging and joking.

I was watching her face, and I could see the moment her guard dropped. The moment she decided what she was seeing couldn’t possibly be faked. That she realized she hadn’t just moved from one set of captors to another. She really was…

Safe.

She held up a hand to her mouth, fingers trembling. The raindrops made it impossible to tell for sure, but I thought she had started crying. She closed her eyes and dropped her hand, and I heard her start quietly singing.

“Amazing grace, how sweet the sound… that saved a wretch like me…”

Her voice was shaky, and she was just the tiniest bit off-key, but her emotion was clear. The Living Legionnaire she had been leaning on joined in almost immediately, and by the end of the first stanza, there were voices rising all around us. Not the most beautiful or professional voices (not that I should be saying that about anyone), but as a group they covered each other’s imperfections, and the emotion packed into each verse of the classic hymn was impossible to deny.

Opinions on exactly which verses belonged apparently varied. After the gorgeous harmony of the first two stanzas, the people around me confidently diverged into at least three different sets of lyrics, then stumbled into uncertain humming and self-aware laughter before finishing strong on the chorus.

“I once was lost but now am found… Was blind but now I see!”

As the notes died away into another giddy cheer, we reached the top of Lavender and I saw Ava and her father with a small group coming toward us. I didn’t recognize them, but I figured they must be the Dragon conscripts who’d stayed behind - the exhausted healers and injured warriors.

I stumbled as an unexpected force hit my back.

A teenager charged past me. “Mom! Mom! You’re okay!”

A dark-skinned woman rushed forward to meet the lanky boy, who stood only an inch shorter than she did.

It was the first of several reunions. I felt proud, watching the happy families reunite, even if I hadn’t been part of the rescue myself. I couldn’t help but glance behind me at the others, though, and saw naked hope and fear on faces straining to see more family members in the distance.

I raised my voice. “Don’t worry! Most of your loved ones went back to Cotton Acres to look for you. These are just the few that had to stay behind.”

Colonel Zwerinski had trudged up the street, hidden behind the other travelers. “I got in touch with them a little bit ago. They’re on their way back. Should be here in twenty minutes or so.”

A young voice piped up, a girl who couldn’t be over twelve. “So they’re all safe? They’re all okay?”

The colonel met her eyes soberly. “Most of them are, but I won’t lie to you: a few have died. I’m in contact with the group that’s on their way over, and I can read off the names of everyone who’s safe. This is gonna take a little concentration, so if I could get some quiet, I’d right appreciate it.”

He closed his eyes and started reading off the list of names. Almost unconsciously, the group moved closer to him. Person after person relaxed as he spoke, and I saw hands move into praying postures, resting over hearts, clasping, or moving in the sign of the cross. Those who’d heard the name they hoped for withdrew, backing away. The crowd thinned, and as it did so, I could see the faces that remain grow increasingly worried.

After twenty or so names, the colonel stopped speaking.

The young girl who’d first asked if everyone was safe was still standing in front of him, fists clenched. “What about the rest of the names?”

“We know the names of two who died: Charise Ellis and Roman Wickson.”

At the announcement, an elderly man and a middle-aged woman seemed to crumple, but the preteen stood straight. She practically shouted at him. “Neither of those names is my mom’s. What about Christine West?”

For the first time, the colonel’s professional demeanor cracked a little. “We can’t be sure. Many of the Dragon’s forces didn’t know each other’s names, and the battle was dark and confusing. It is not impossible that she fled, but we do have corpses we have not been able to identify. Two, we know came from Cotton Acres, but we don’t know their names. Two others, we’re not real sure of anything about them. Can you tell us what your mother looks like? We can check for you.”

The girl paused, considering his offer. Then she shook her head, violently. “No. I want to see them.”

“Me too.”

“I need to see.”

Others stepped forward alongside the young girl. Older people, thankfully: fair or not, I could handle their fear and pain much better than I could have dealt with more scared kids.

Dane Zwerinski nodded at her gravely, then turned to me. “Meghan, I hate to ask this of you, but I need to stay available to assist with communications. Can you escort them?”

I swallowed. “Yeah. Give me just a moment.”

I handed Cassie to George and let him and Priya know I needed them to keep an eye on my kids for a bit.

Seeing the bodies again… It wasn’t something to look forward to, but it didn’t fill me with dread, only a sort of hollow sorrow. I’d helped carry a few the previous evening, to a garage where Freeze was being used to preserve them until we could identify them and get them buried.

Showing those bodies to their family members, though?

That thought made me feel sick.

More people than I expected followed me when I returned. It seemed that while the Dragon’s conscripts had been kept from socializing, the same hadn’t been true of the hostages. In addition to the three people looking for family, ten others came along as well, holding hands and providing moral support. I was glad of that. Heartbreak is a terrible thing; even worse to suffer it among strangers.

We didn’t have far to travel. The combat group housed in 107 Lavender had been moved to an unoccupied home on Azure, so we could repurpose the building as a rough hospital, with the garage serving as a morgue.

I opened the front door and led the way inside. Mindy was asleep in a recliner, but she started awake at our entry. “Wha-? What’s going on?”

“We’re here to see the morgue.”

Her eyes widened. “Of course. Yeah. Right this way.”

She shoved herself out of the chair and led her way through the house, stepping over the still form of a man with an eyepatch slumped against the hallway wall.

If anyone was going to be present at our makeshift hospital, Mindy was a perfect choice. She had experience as a nurse, not to mention Healing Touch. I’d heard she had been stepping up to help out frequently after I’d caught her stealing my squirt guns. Even so, I was surprised, not by her presence, but by the fact that she was far from alone. There were still a lot of people in the house.

“What are you all doing here? Priya told me she’d checked in and you didn’t need any more Healing Touch.”

Mindy nodded. “Yeah. Everything’s sealed up. It’s just that there are a lot of people tired from doing the treatment, and there are others we need to watch. Especially the people with gut wounds… most of them have fevers. Our biggest bottleneck is Cleanse. There’s only a few people who took it, and no one with over 200% synergy… They grabbed everyone they could last night, but it wasn’t enough.” She gestured behind us to the sleeping man with the eyepatch. “That’s Mason, if you didn’t recognize him.”

“Your neighbor?” I’d gone to him for Cleanse after Cassie had gotten hurt, and it had taken about all he had to purify the upper arm of a toddler.

“Yeah,” Mindy confirmed. “I don’t think he’s gotten any more abilities. He showed up on my doorstep the morning after I got back with the pepper oil from your house. He’d been trying to fight the leafenrats and one got a claw into his eye before he could kill it. I healed him up, but I couldn’t save the eye. I don’t think he’s gone out again since, not until the Combat Group showed up to get us both last night.”

“How many patients do you still have?”

“Four!” She slammed a fist into a wall as we walked, frustrated. “It’s been a nasty cycle of trying to Cleanse enough, healing it up, then having to cut it back open a few hours later to try to Cleanse again. We’ve got enough people with Cure Disease, thank God, but if there’s mess sealed inside people, they just get reinfected. It seems like bacteria can be inside people without counting as something to Cure, if it’s not actively infecting tissue. We don’t really have a choice other than to keep trying to get the contamination out.”

She laughed, a little helplessly. “I know how to clean a gut wound as well as anyone, but the healing! It saved lives last night, but I’m seeing the dark side of it this morning. These people are coming in with pockets of crap already hiding behind healthy flesh, and we don’t know where. Cleanse is the only decent option we have, and we’ve hardly got anyone who can do it!”

“George can,” I said. “I think his synergy is pretty strong too, but he was out with the rescue group. He just got back. I’ll send him over, and ask the Legionnaires if they have anyone else.”

“I’ll go myself! What does he look like?”

“Ask the colonel,” I said, and she nodded, abandoning me at the door to the garage morgue.

“Okay,” I told the small crowd behind me. “Inside here is where we’ve been storing the bodies. If any of you would rather give us a description, I can still check-”

“They’re in here? Then stop making us wait!”

The young girl shoved past me, and a blast of chill air filled the hall as she opened the door to the garage.