“It is.” It is his job to make everything right. And he will. When he does, he will have Benji back by his side, his father will look him in the eye, and the death squads will realize the mistake they made when they cast him out. It will work out. It has to. God is good. “He’ll come back eventually. He said he would. I can talk to him about how it’s too dangerous out there, that it’s better to come home—”

Another soldier, Brother Rowland, picks up his head. “There’s not enough time.”

“There’s always time,” Theo counters, because it’s something his mother always said.

“Fuck that.” Brother Rowland puts a cigarette between his lips and strikes a match. “We should just cut off her legs and be done with it. Let her try and run like that.”

How dare he. That language in a holy place! “That is not how you treat a warrior of God!”

“That bitch took everything!” Brother Rowland’s voice cracks through the atrium. Sister Kipling stares at nothing and does not say a word. “I’m not going to burn just because you can’t put a heretic in her place!”

BANG.

Something hits the remnants of the door.

Brother Rowland drops his cigarette. Theo could choke on his heart climbing into his throat. The sound echoes, bang-bang-bang, bouncing off the rafters and deep into the cavity of Theo’s chest.

A person steps into the sanctuary. Backlit by the sun. Hair turned copper, a halo.

Theo recognizes him immediately, and when his name comes to him like a prayer, it is the first that has tasted sweet in days.

He whispers, “Benji?”

Benji crumples to the floor.

Theo is out of his seat, stumbling over his legs, catching himself on the pews. Benji. What happened to him? His face looks like it was put through a shredder. His clothes are torn. His arms are blistered and flayed.

Theo falls to his knees in front of him. “Benji,” he says, “Benji, look at me.” He pulls the tiny boy into his lap, gathering him against his chest, pressing his face to the ruined flesh of his cheek. “I’m right here. What happened? Are you okay?”

“They—” Benji chokes. The word sounds awful. Theo can’t believe what the Flood has done to him, what Seraph has done. Sister Kipling will be so proud, Mother Woodside will be so proud, his father will be so proud.

Benji has come back to him.

“They found out.” Benji is sobbing without tears, a painful hitch in his words. The nest howls. “They found out about Seraph, and they hate me.”