In a personal capacity, she had tried to be friendly, to open discussion, and answer questions for people. People had been notified and given the impression that the prisoners would be out soon. Two hours ago. As a form of compromise, considering the shitty weather, she’d offered to text everyone on a list as soon as people emerged, so the worried friends, family and teammates could wait in a nearby coffee shop or store. Only half had taken her up on the offer.

She was trying to piece together who was here for who.

She knew Erin, though she didn’t know Erin. The girl had ducked off to a coffee shop. Rain would be pleased, she imagined. Less pleased that Lachlan was with her.

Then there was the gang of creepiness made manifest. Eerie to see them hanging out, all just slightly off. She imagined that one kid in a classroom, who was weird or offbeat, traumatized or with a weird home life, who an objective observer would choose as the odd one out. Except they were all like that. The one who was too quiet and unwilling to make eye contact. The touchy-feely one with a poor sense of boundaries. One who laughed a little too loud. The sullen one who looked ready to pick a fight if someone so much as dropped a pen. The one who wore makeup that didn’t suit her age or the circumstance, who brimmed with nervous energy. The robot who looked too placid at all times, even when others erupted or got agitated near him.

All lanky, with fine boned faces, straight noses, and pouty lower lips, most with heads of black hair that straddled the line between curly and wavy, with some exceptions for the one blond guy or the girl and her brother with straighter hair. All dressed in expensive clothes, in a city where expensive clothes were really expensive: three to five times more expensive at a baseline as what it might have been before Gold Morning.

Eerie, too, because she had run into them in the years before Gold Morning. They were growing up. Some had left, by the looks of it, but most had stayed.

There were parents. She recognized Vista’s. She had talked to Tristan and Byron’s, answering questions and sending them to the coffee shop. Mr. Vera looked old, and he wasn’t really that old in reality. Good looking in a dad way, graying hair, lined face combined with a younger, athletic frame. It broke her heart in a few ways, just talking to the man. Because some of that age and weariness was because of the events of the last few years weighing heavily on him, wearing him down and costing him sleep. She saw it in his eyes, a perpetual sadness or pain.