Then she was gone, running off, throwing her arms around Darlene and Candy’s shoulders, almost bowling them over. She’d still been moving forward with enough force her legs swung forward and then back before hitting the ground.

“I mean…” I said. “Is that where we go, okay, you can’t see them anymore?”

“They’re good for her in a lot of ways,” Tristan said. “She’s good for them. We’ll keep an eye on her.”

I clapped a hand on his armored shoulder.

The others were on the other side of the portal already. I didn’t realize where we were going until I was at the threshold.

Wooden cabins, placed haphazardly, with the road seeming to weave between them rather than them being placed by the road. There were short walls of stone for corralling animals, but the animals were gone. Only the repainted school buses that were being used by the Patrol were visible as a kind of anachronistic, anatopistic break in the place’s ‘feel’.

It felt creepy. Cars were jumbled up in how they were parked at one end, and off in the distance, there were fields that had the bright yellow of tents set up, with more going up as I watched, like distant flowers blooming before my eyes. It looked like a two-by-two organization, with heaters shared between tents in case one crapped out. There was the opportunity to rearrange the insulated walls to double layer or lay them against the ground for extra padding and comfort against the cold ground. Probably extended families or families who knew each other, to be that organized.

People who knew how to do it because they’d probably been in tents last winter or spring, and they’d only briefly had a home before having to evacuate again, if they’d gotten that far.

I could see evidence of battles in the not-too-distant past. Craters. Bullet holes in walls.

I met Rain’s eyes. He shrugged.

His home, from not too long ago. The Mathers compound. It might be that we were out in the boonies after all.

It might be that any place that wasn’t ‘in the boonies’ was caught up in the damage.

I stopped a few steps into the threshold, putting my hand out to stop Capricorn. “Cap.”

The others kept walking, surveying the area, looking around. Some stopped to look over in the horizon.

I looked too. I could see it. A plume of green smoke.

In the other direction, a crack had traveled directly skyward, like a lightning bolt had just… deleted what lay beneath it. A black scratch against the sky.

The others were being met by the Patrol. I saw a couple of familiar faces, but not the most familiar. People I’d sparred with, talked to, eaten with. Many were bringing boxes out of the buses.

“What’s up?” Capricorn asked.

We were more or less alone.

“How are you?” I asked. “I heard about Reconciliation. Are you okay?”

He sighed, then shook his head.