Not her full focus. Her hand reached past my coat for my side, thumbnail poking through my shirt to my stomach, fingernails at my back. A claw of revenge, for forcing her hand.

Entirely undeserved. If she’d embarrassed herself because I’d pushed her, I’d feel like shit and I’d deserve the revenge claw. But she hadn’t. We needed the bright moments, against such a grim backdrop, and we couldn’t take or maintain those moments so long as we had our greater deception. A secret kept by, if I was counting right, seventy-two people in this building right now.

Cinereal continued, “Clip Kidz, we have a special errand for you, if you’re willing and if your guardians are willing to sign off. We will pay, but we need you to take on a mission that we know will fail, because it’s important that Teacher thinks we’re putting up some resistance. If you’ll stay after? Thank you. For the other smaller teams, you’ll be running errands for us or supporting the larger squads. One of those squads is us, because we anticipate an attack on the Bunker by Teacher once he realizes what we’re doing…”

She went on. It hardly mattered. To one in three of us, it felt like busywork, meant to bide time while the Wardens figured out where they could access or crack open portals to Teacher’s realm. Those in that group wanted to move now. Forget the extra portals, just send more people through the four or so that we had. They were restless. For many of them, the other shoe hadn’t dropped yet. Every hour that Teacher was left to his own devices, their secrets and relationships all hung in the balance.

To another one in three of us, I was pretty sure, it felt like a doomed proposition. That the attack on Teacher’s base would be hard, and resources we were committing or spending now would be resources we didn’t have against Teacher. Or at least, we wouldn’t have at full readiness and capacity. It was necessary to keep up the act, but ugh. That group would be the quiet ones, the ones who were chin up and shoulders square today, but who dreaded tomorrow. For many of them, secrets had already been spilled. They’d felt Teacher’s hand and the associated hopelessness.

And to the last group, one I subscribed to, both were true. It felt like the Wardens knew the attack would be devastating. It felt like they were being safe, distracting us, preoccupying us.

Not chin-up, not shoulders-square, not restless either. Just… dealing with a sinking feeling in our guts. I was certain that nine out of ten of us had come to this meeting hoping to get the order, the news that we’d be attacking in a few hours. It was too hard to believe that things would be easier or better tomorrow.