A girl near the van door shifts her weight. “Are you coming back?” she asks Lila. “Or is this… it?”
Lila softens, bending down to meet the girl. “We’re not abandoning you.” She smiles at her. “We’ve got other messes to clean up, but you’ll see us again. I promise.”
Sterling starts shepherding his set toward the path, carrying two of the babies. I fall into stride with mine. “Remember what we talked about,” I remind them. “You can pick who you want to walk in with. If you want to hang onto one of us, that’s okay. If you want to walk in alone, that’s fine too.” A small hand latches onto the back of my hoodie immediately, adjusting my pace so they don’t get dragged.
Mara has the inner hall clear of anyone, with staff hovering out of the kids' direct sight. It’s smart. Too many strangers at once could make it feel more like an ambush rather than a warm welcome. She pushes thedoor wider as we approach. “Hi.” Mara makes her voice small. “I’m so happy to have you all. The house rules are on the board in the kitchen. Nothing major, just to keep chaos down. We’ll go over those later. For now, I have three questions for each of you; you can answer them in whatever order you like: Are you hungry? Are you tired? And do you want to be in a room with someone or alone?”
One of the boys eyes her warily, “Is there a none of the above?” he asks.
“Yes,” Mara says with a small chuckle. “I like to call it sitting on the couch and glaring at me until you decide.” The boy seems to think about it, then he gives a tiny shrug, which might be considered an agreement. Mara moves on through the entryway, giving them a tour. “This is the entryway,” she points out. “There’s a shoe rack. You can take yours off if you want or don’t. No one will be in trouble.” Mara moves to another room. “This is the living room—sofas, blankets, and a TV with every channel you can imagine.” She points down the hallway to our left. “The kitchen’s back there. The Chef will make you anything you ask for.”
A girl at my side whispers, “What if I can’t sleep?”
“You can talk to Mara, and she can see what she can do to help you. Maybe read or talk to someone. I’m sure you can wander the hall as long as you’re quiet.” The girl nods, not quite believing me yet, but trying anyway. Mara’s staff gently peels the kids off, one at a time. A woman with worry lines and kind eyes crouches to ask a boy if he wants a shower or food first. A tall guy in a faded hoodie points out a table covered in snacks: fruit, crackers, granola bars, nothing in a wrapper that could resemble hospital food. Everything is ordinary on purpose.
One of the littlest, a boy who attached himself to Sterling halfway through the drive, refuses to let go of his sleeve even when they reach the middle of the living room. “You can sit with me,” Sterling offers, dropping onto one end of a couch. “We can judge the decor together.”
The boy’s mouth twitches. “The curtains are ugly,” he says.
“Brutal,” Sterling belts out a laugh. “You’ll do just fine here.”
I end up near the wall, just inside the living room, where I can see as much as possible without blocking anyone’s escape routes. I reach back with my free hand and curl my fingers around a child hanging on to me, not looking down. “How’s it going on the scale?” I ask quietly.
“What scale?” The small voice asks.
“From one to ten,” I say. “One being this is boring, and ten being this is worse than before.”
A beat. “Maybe… three?” The girl whispers. “It’s weird. But it doesn’t feel like… there.”
“That’s a good start,” I say. “Weird is survivable. We can manage weird.”
Mara appears at my elbow as if she teleported right beside me. “We’ll take it from here,” she says, voice low so it doesn’t carry to the kids. “You can stay through food if you want, but you don’t have to. Sometimes it’s easier on them if the people who pulled them out don’t hover while they’re trying to figure out if this place is real. They need to bond with the new adults, so they don’t keep looking at you like the only fire exits.”
Sterling folds his arms, looks around the room, then back at me. “You okay to leave them?” he asks gently.
No. Not even close. My mind keeps bringing me back to what I may be carrying, imagining what if one of these kids were mine… “Yeah,” I lie.
Sterling meets my eyes. For a second, the noise drops away—the kids chattering, the clinking of dishes. It’s just the two of us with the weight of everything we’re not saying. “Ten minutes,” he says quietly. “We do one more lap, let them see us saying bye, then we go.”
“Deal.” I exhale, giving him a bittersweet smile.
We take that last walk, checking in, trading a few more bad jokes, pointing out bathrooms, light switches, and the fact that the only door that has a lock is the front door. When we finally make it back to the entryway, Mara’s leaning against the wall, arms crossed, like she knew exactly how long it would take us to pry our fingers off. “You did your part,” she says as she wraps me up in a tight squeeze. “Let us do ours.”
“Don’t let anyone from Cicada set foot on your sidewalk,” I whisper.
Mara’s eyes gleam with wicked satisfaction. “They won’t like how that ends,” she promises, the words dripping with poisoned honey... “We’ll see you soon.”
We step back out into the night. The door closes behind us, the lock clicking into place, turning the house into a sealed box of light and possibility. Sterling exhales, a long, slow breath. “Ready?” he asks.
No, my heart screams at me. Begging me to stay with the children. “Yeah,” I say, heading for the truck, toward the warehouse, toward the rest of the mess waiting for us. “Let’s go reset home base before something else breaks.”
The highway hums underneath the tires. Sterling leads in the van, a boxy shadow in my headlights. Cam’s car follows a few lengths back, Lila riding back shotgun with him, their silhouettes trading gestures every so often. My phone is facing down on the passenger seat. It buzzes once. My stomach drops like someone cut a wire. The screen glows against the dark, Dr. L’s name flashing across the screen. I want to let it go to voicemail. I check the mirrors, then hit accept and bring it to my ear, keeping my other hand welded to the wheel. “Hey,” I say, aiming for casual and landing somewhere near frayed. “Tell me you’re calling to complain about my bedside manner and not for any real reason.”
“Hi, Kiera.” Dr. L’s voice is warm and sharp at the same time, just as before. “You driving?”
“Yes,” I say. “We’re headed to another safehouse.”
“I’ll keep it short then. I got your labs.”
