They were using the powers to teleport people in. I couldn’t see where the fade-in happened or where the teleportation destination was, but as the crowd shuffled, there were more of the people with tattoos, trashy people, and people that didn’t look like refugees.

The guy on the end of the pole pointed. I moved closer to him, and followed the line of his arm and finger to see.

A man with a daughter, sitting on a blanket at the base of a fence.

“The girl or the man?” I asked.

“The man. He’s the one bringing them in. Keeps the kid close as a shield, in case someone catches on. Different kids, some days.”

I nodded.

“I think every day of going over there and taking him out of the picture. Letting him know I know.”

“Wouldn’t be worth it,” I said.

The noises of the crowd of Fallen increased, a fresh chant. Heads were turning and people were smiling, because they didn’t know, and positivity and high energy meant a lot when they were as tired and despondent as they were. Some would have spent a long time waiting for their chance to come through.

A dangerous and vulnerable thing, to have no place to go.

Flare 2.2

There was something to be said about the fact that the hospital was still in construction while it was running. There were patients in the waiting room, sitting in the chairs that had been bolted to the floor, and the unhappiness of needing a hospital visit was compounded by the fact that a third of the way across the room, behind a plastic sheet that had been taped to walls, ceiling and floor, a team was using power tools and calling out in loud voices as they built the rest of the room.

The hospital staff looked pretty miserable too, most of them sequestered on the other side of a counter, walled off from the patients by a plexiglass window. Security guards stood off to one side.

“Can I help you?” a secretary asked.

“I was wondering if it was possible for me to see a patient?”

“Visiting hours are open. Patient’s name?”

“Fume Hood. I don’t know her real name.”

The secretary stopped, then looked at the male secretary, who sat at the other end of the counter. She looked past him at the security guard.

Of course.

“I was one of the people giving her medical attention when the ambulance arrived,” I said. I knew it wouldn’t matter, that they would assume I’d been lying, but I hoped it would temper the reaction.

“She’s not accepting visitors,” the secretary said.

“One second,” I heard. A female voice.