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“It’s not that I want to leave, but staying isn’t that easy. I mean, with all the trouble I—”
“Seems to be what draws them to us,” she says with a grin.
I smile, too, before it drops.
“But it’s not just that. I can’t abandon the people relying on me to help them,” I tell her.
“You mean the kids the Division is searching for?”
“I mean anyone that’s being hunted or manipulated by the Division. I can’t just walk away and pretend it was all just a bad dream.”
“You’re just one person, Avery. There is only so much you can do.”
“It only takes one person to make a difference.”
“Yeah, well, it only takes one person to start a war, too, but that doesn’t mean they should.”
I pour myself a glass of juice and turn to look at Salem as she rubs her stomach. “I have to do something, Salem. Nothing will change otherwise. And that’s exactly what all the people before me did. Nothing. They either became part of the problem or pretended there wasn’t one.”
“You don’t know how deep this goes.”
“My caring is not based on their level of corruption. They could have the power to burn the world to the ground, but it won’t stop me from trying to save it.”
“Why you?”
“Why not me?” I snap back, furious, but she just starts laughing. I jolt. What the actual—
“Yeah, you fit right in. Nobody else here likes to take the easy route either,” she says with a smile before wincing and rubbing her stomach.
“You okay?”
“Yeah, I’m just running out of space. If this kid doesn’t come soon, I might explode.”
“Go sit down, Salem. You just told me that James was picking up food. You don’t need to be in here.”
“I was just getting the plates and—” She hisses, grabbing hold of the counter.
I slam the glass down and hurry over to her. “Salem?”
“I’ve had a sore back all night.”
“Okay, random, but okay.”
“I don’t think it was a sore back.”
“Fuck, Salem! You’re in labor?” I screech at her as she grabs my hand and squeezes.
“I think that’s a possibility, yes.” She breathes through what’s clearly a contraction, and when it passes, she stands up and let’s go of my hand.
“Okay, I’m good. We should probably call Oz and Zig, even though I made James get rid of them. He told them that they needed to go through Cooper’s attic.”
“At eight in the morning?”
She bites her lip.
“Do I even want to know?”
“They were driving me crazy. They wouldn’t stop fussing. I told them it was just a backache, but they kept acting like… like…”
