Meghan

I was the first person back. I’m not sure how long I spent alone, running up and down the ramp, looking for people, looking for answers.

It felt like it took forever, running through a world of emptiness and silence… but eventually, others began to return.

The first group I saw was Tori’s, sunlight glinting off her metal armor.

“My kids! Have you seen them? Do you know what happened to them?”

Tori’s face was covered by a metal visor, but I could see the concern my words brought to the faces of her companions, a young woman with two small children. The other woman said something, but I couldn’t hear a damn thing. I stared at her.

She repeated herself.

“I’m sorry. I can’t hear you.”

Understanding lit her face, and she lifted up a tiny girl - only a little older than Cassie - and spoke to her gently. The little girl reached out a hand toward me, and I met her in a gentle high-five.

Hearing returned, and the little girl’s eyes drooped. I was initially confused - even if the kid only had one ability, hearing loss should be a small enough fix not to tire her out - but then I realized my upper arm no longer hurt. I hadn’t even noticed the pain until its absence made me aware. Dimly, I recalled the second blow I’d blocked, and the curving claw punching into my arm over the edge.

It didn’t matter.

“My kids. Have you seen them?”

“I thought y’all were going together.” Tori’s normally-grumpy voice was tinged with concern for once.

“We were. Someone grabbed me at the last second. Stole me away and left them behind. I… I don’t know what happened to them.”

Tori stepped back. “Even lil’ Gavin?”

“All of them. Gavin. Cassie. Micah.”

“No… We didn’t see anything. I think we might have been the first group to go.”

That’s right, she had.

Tori was continuing to talk, horror lacing her tone, words falling out of her mouth, the hapless speech of someone who doesn’t know what to say but has to fill the silence. “We, uh, got through there pretty quick. Just took the blade route, snapped all the blades off at their base and walked through. A little tedious, but straightforward. The-”

I walked away as she was talking, not caring what she had to say. None of it was useful to me. None of it was important.

Only one thing mattered.

Oh Vince, I thought. Where are you? I needed you today. I needed you to watch my back. I needed you to help take care of our kids. I… I didn’t take care of our kids, Vince. I don’t know where they are.

I gulped at the thought.

Prayer was all I had, so I prayed as I walked, looking for someone else who could tell me where my children were. Who could tell me they were okay.

Dear God, protect my children. They are small, even though they think they’re big. They are weak, even though they think they’re strong.

Saint Anthony, patron saint of lost articles, I do not know where my children are. Please help them find the way to return to me safely.

Mary, mother of God, you who watched your son die, please intercede for me. I do not want to know your pain.

On and on, over and over, for seconds or minutes or hours: I didn’t know. I continued wandering, upstairs and down.

I was in the quarry when Priya appeared. She met me with a bright smile. “Meghan! You must have been so fast! I thought I was quick, just walking across the blades, but I guess I did need to be careful where I placed my hands and feet. I couldn’t risk falling with Arnav in the carrier.”

She gestured to her front, where her son was sleeping, whole and hale.

I felt my heart drop. “None of my kids went with you?”

“Your kids? No… why would they…”

Her face froze, smile crumbling away like a sandcastle at high tide.

“Someone grabbed me.” I said. “I got pulled away without them. I was hoping they had found you…”

Priya’s mute stare was answer enough. I turned away, not wanting to meet her eyes.

“Meghan, maybe they found someone else. George could have taken one of them.”

One of them. I didn’t respond.

“Or… or…” I could almost hear her thinking, going over the list of those we knew. The colonel had a full group. Tori did. Carlos. Darryl. Helen. All of the Points Siphon recipients.

Pointy had helped work out plans for anyone who’d asked, to optimize teams for different group sizes, to let families stay together and to ensure an even mix of abilities ready to face almost any threat. We’d seen the lists. At a group size of four, there were a few others like Priya, who had planned to go in with just one adult and one child, but they were rare. Most people had opted for larger teams.

Even if my kids found a two-person team, one of my children would be left out. Would need to find another team to join. No one with four or five abilities in our neighborhood had planned to go in alone.

“There are people,” Priya said instead. “They could have found someone. Pointy would know who to look for.”

I twitched my head, trying to nod. Trying to believe what she was saying.

More people returned.

Some groups had blazed their way through the easiest route, slaughtering leafenrats and rams and badblankets, revealing that yes, there had been a portal at the end of that tunnel. A few made their way through the gated tunnel, like Helen’s group: she hadn’t been able to affect the metal, but the gates were anchored in stone. Her abilities were powerful enough that the extra work it took to remove those gates wasn’t enough to halt her. The driver who’d remained behind made her way through the gated tunnel, too, Animate Machinery opening the locks one after another, although she said she’d found the locks surprisingly taxing to manipulate.

It took George about ten minutes to make it back. Anju and Samar immediately began yelling my children’s names when they returned.

“You saw them?” I asked.

“We did! I tried to take Cassie with us, but she wouldn’t let go of Micah. They’re… not back yet?”

Priya answered for me. “No. You’re the first person we’ve spoken to that’s been able to tell us anything. Everyone was so fixated on their own groups that it seems like no one really noticed them.”

She passed Arnav to George and put her arms around Samar and Anju. Anju accepted the hug, but tilted her head up to meet her mom’s eyes. “Micah’s not back yet? Is he okay? Did he have to go in… by himself?”

Priya gave her a tight smile. “We’re trying to find that out, honey.”

“How… how much had the central area expanded by the time you guys exited?” How much time do my children have?

George hesitated. “Our tunnel curved, and it was pretty long. I couldn’t see the edge of the middle when I exited, so I’m not sure. It was getting bigger pretty slowly, though. I don’t think it’s meant to make anyone rush… I think it’s just meant to make staying still not an option.”

“So… my kids have time.”

“Oh, definitely. Definitely.”

I wished George sounded more certain.

We sat down where he had reappeared, the last place anyone had seen my kids, and waited.

Waited.

There was a commotion on the other side of the room.

Mason was reappearing.

At least, most of Mason.

As the coating around him disappeared, not all of him remained: one arm was completely gone, and the leg on the same side was missing a huge chunk of flesh and muscle.

“Good lord,” Priya said. “I assumed you’d killed him already.”

“Not yet. I was trying to get back to my kids as fast as I could. I really expected him to die in there. I must have injured that thing more than I realized, if it didn’t get up to kill him.”

I stood up and started walking across the room. Already, people were crowding around his injured form, probably trying to heal him.

What a horrible waste of energy.

I could hear Priya behind me, attempting to direct her children’s attention away, instant accomplice to my intentions.

George caught my arm. “Meghan… Wait! You need to think about this. You can’t take this back. We can try him. We’ll have our court soon.”

I frowned at him, shaking my arm free. What, things like that were going to make me let a child-killer live? There was nothing he could do to atone for what he’d done.

“Meghan, stop! He isn’t worth the trouble you’ll cause yourself.” George raised his voice. “Hey, help me stop her!”

His voice stirred the crowd around me and more people’s hands reached out to slow me. Frustrated, I struggled to get past them. “Get off of me! I know what I’m doing!” Didn’t George understand? Trouble didn’t matter. I didn’t care what happened to me. There was nothing that-

“MICAH!”

Anju’s cry of delight shattered my train of thought. I spun in place, searching, searching.

And then I saw him. Short black hair, a little longer now after two missed haircuts, bright, intelligent eyes, slender limbs that had only gotten a little thinner after two weeks of hard exercise and unpalatable food. As his far arm appeared, I could see another set of small fingers wrapped in his, an arm that led up to Gavin’s mop of dark curls, now long enough to cover part of his face, his usual mischievous look replaced by grim determination. Gavin’s hands were both wrapped tightly around the haft of his spear, and I felt like I was sinking into icy water for a moment.

No. No!

But then I noticed Gavin’s tail, stretching out behind him, pulling his sister back to me, back to us. Cassie’s eyes were drooping closed and Pointy was clutched tightly in her arms, stuffing visible where a slash had torn open the fabric of her neck and shell.

I don’t remember running toward them. I don’t remember moving. They were in my arms and I was laughing, crying.

“How? How?” I craned my neck, looking for the adult they’d found to shepherd them through. “Who took you through?”

“We took ourselves, Mom.”

I couldn’t have heard that right.

“What? But there were too many leafenrats and badblankets for you to fight by yourself. You could never use your abilities to kill so many.”

Gavin laughed, stepping away from me. “Mom! Did you forget you gave us these?” He waved his spear at me with one hand, and now I could see the viscous discolored blood that coated the tip. He used his other hand to pat the knife at his hip.

I blinked. “You actually killed monsters with those? A lot of monsters? I wanted you to have them for emergencies, but…”

Gavin slashed his spear downward, startling me… but he kept the point far enough away that I was in no danger. “It’s basically a pointy jo staff, Mom. We practice jo staff all the time at aikido.”

“We only practice it once a week, Gavin,” Micah said.

“Yeah, but every week. That’s basically all the time. Anyway, I am super good with it.” Gavin struck a weird pose and contorted his face into his “cool” expression.

I couldn’t help but smile. “I… wow. I… knew you’d practiced, but… didn’t you get hurt?”

Gavin slumped a little. “Yeah… I had to keep doing healing. I was pretty tired by the end. Oh, plus the really big thing cut off Micah’s foot.”

“What?!”

Micah hid one foot behind the other. “Not the whole foot, Gavin. Just a little bit of foot.”

“Oh.” I said, weakly. “Just… a little… bit of foot.”

Micah’s shoulders were hunched. “I’m sorry.”

“Let me see,” I said, and Micah reluctantly brought his foot forward. A neat triangle was gone, including his big toe, second toe, and most of his middle toe. Gavin had clearly healed him. The missing part was smooth, with no sign of scabs or scarring.

“Does it hurt?”

Micah shook his head. “Not really. I mean, kind of, if I step on it in some ways, but not most of the time. I’m sorry.”

“Why do you keep apologizing? Sweetheart, none of this was your fault.”

“It was, though!”

The story tumbled out. Micah fought with Pointy for blame for the mishaps, and I listened, rapt, as they described their decision to fight the slimes, Gavin’s grapple with the bladetail, and their narrow and slightly incomplete escape from the charging bonefur irritated by the smoke.

Cassie was drooping in my arms, seeming exhausted, but she, too, got in on the apologies. “I’m sorry I stayed with Pointy in my shell and didn’t help the brothers. The bladetails were scary. The first one hurt Pointy! And the big monster was really scary.”

“You were brave when they really needed you though,” Pointy said, pushing her face up against Cassie’s.

“Oh?” I asked.

Micah hesitated. “Well… we were really tired by the end of our road. We could see the portal, but there were three bladetails by it. We talked about just trying to run for it, but…”

“Micah is not good at climbing anymore,” Gavin said dismissively. “He kept falling and stuff, and I couldn’t carry him and Cassie and do good climbing.”

Micah looked irritated at Gavin’s matter-of-fact assessment, but didn’t argue. “Yeah, so we were trying to figure out how we could fight three bladetails at once, and then Cassie took her shell down and said she would do it.”

Cassie hunched into me, whispering. “We were up really high and the bad guys were right there.”

“That does sound scary.”

“I made SO MANY friends to do the fighting.” Cassie made a tiny fist, then flared it open. “Boom!”

I glanced at Pointy. “Summon Seeker?”

The turtle nodded. “Yes. She took down three of them simultaneously, almost entirely by herself. That’s why she’s quite tired now.”

“I helped,” Gavin said, smugly. “One of them was coming for us, so I slapped it back to Cassie’s friends with my Super Tail.”

I had so many questions, but none of them mattered. My kids were back - not quite whole, maybe, but they’d done better than I could possibly have expected. Better than I’d realized they could do. I’d tried so hard to keep them away from monsters and let them earn Points safely… but maybe I’d been trying too hard.

Maybe, if I’d let them practice fighting more, with their spears and knives, they would have had the confidence to take the route with the multitude of leafenrats to begin with, and Micah would still have his toes. I’d never thought of myself as a helicopter parent, hovering over my kids closely enough that I prevented them from learning to live their own lives, but maybe I’d been judging myself too much by normal standards. It made sense that when the world changed so much, the standards for good parenting would need to change too.

“You’ve all done so well,” I told them. “I think… I haven’t been having enough faith in you.”

Gavin perked up. “Are you going to let me fight with my Super Tail now? And take fighty abilities?”

I laughed, a little crazily, a little sadly. “I think I had better do that, don’t you? You were pretty amazing today, even with me holding you back. You were all pretty amazing.”

“Are we going to go out and fight now? I want to practice fighting more monsters by myself, but… not by myself by myself. You should be there.” Micah leaned into me.

“Maybe not right this second. Cassie is falling asleep, Pointy is injured, and you just told me you were both really tired… but tomorrow? Definitely. We’ve got more Points to get and lots more to learn. You guys with me?”

Cassie looked nervous, but gave me a tiny thumbs-up. “I can be brave.”

Pointy nodded, white stuffing fuzzing out from the cut behind her head. “I failed this time. I shall not do so again.”

Micah grinned. “I’ve been waiting for this!”

“Yeah!” said Gavin, offering his older brother a high five.

That only left me; I’d have to be ready too. Ready to let my kids take bigger risks, to get stronger and more capable. It would be hard to watch, hard to let them get hurt… But if I wanted to be a good mom, it was time to get better at apocalypse parenting.