One leader moved his hand, motioning for others to put guns down. Everyone stood down. Silence reigned, but for shouting from in the building below us.

Foil had returned, and had ascended to the rooftop in a flash. I hadn’t even seen her making the approach. She held darts—my spikes—in one hand, all bunched together.

“I had to back off. I pinned them, but then a squad headed my way,” Foil said.

“Got it. We should be expecting them?”

“Maybe.”

Ushering them one way with her energy blades, my mom had the two squad leaders stand with arms raised over their heads, backs to the door that led down.

Foil and I relieved the other nine soldiers of their weapons. Foil touched the excess weapons and inserted them so they intersected boots and rooftop, embedding them there.

Below, the commotion hadn’t stopped. Upset, dissent, doubts.

Then, all at once, something approximating silence.

“Vic,” I heard Rain.

I flew to his side.

“Cradle’s awake early.”

The egg was opening, the configuration shifting. Cradle was pulling tubes away from him. He was wet with blood. Love Lost and Colt were lying on the floor of the orb, more tubes in them.

He moved slowly, as if in pain. He wiped at his face, to get the blood out of his eyes. There was enough of it that his features were obscured. Even with the frost at the window, he was raised up high enough that I could see the tears in his eyes, the wet tracks. His hand clutched at his chest, then reached for a pocket. Eyeglass case.

He stopped, not putting them on.

Mask, instead, at his hip. He started pulling that on, and stopped partway once again.

He screamed, a roar.

There it was. That satisfaction, that didn’t feel as awful as it needed to.

Heavens 12.f

He took off his glasses, holding them in his hands. The time for tantrums was over, and the fragility of the glasses in his hands was a reminder to himself. Not to clench his fists, not to stand. If he opened his eyes and looked at something or someone, then the blurriness of the scene was an immediate warning to himself. If the glasses shifted in his fingers because he moved, that gave him pause.

He’d broken his glasses once, years ago. He’d done it in a childish tantrum, and it had taken days before he could get new ones. Back in the ugly days.

That hadn’t been the day the tantrums stopped, but it had been a lesson that had stayed with him. Rare, when he had so many terrible teachers.

“Ryan,” Old Mrs. Parrish said.

Speaking of terrible teachers.