As I broke the hug, I saw my mother walking a little unsteadily to the couch, to sit on the armrest. Small steps, more like she was an old woman than a forty-year-old.

I was put in mind of Dad after his head injury, but this—this was my fault. In large part.

“What on earth did you get up to?” Crystal asked me. “You’re on probation?”

“Benched, until they can decide how serious it was. They’ve broken up Breakthrough, but they may pull us back in later today, depending on how bad things get.”

“And this questionably serious thing was…?”

“Definitely serious, just a question of whether it was catastrophically serious or regular old serious. It was us diving into the guts of things. Deeper and faster than we thought we would. With more danger. Into the guts of powers.”

“Why?” Crystal asked.

“Because someone had to. Has to. The bad guys are already doing it. It’s like waging a war in the twenty-first century without considering computers as a factor.”

“And?” Crystal asked.

“And I’m tired. Numb. Freaked out,” I said. “I don’t think I could even begin to explain the scale of it. The Wardens are freaking out because of the scale of it, and I think at best they have blurry interdimensional camera images pulled from Kenzie’s tech.”

“But everyone’s safe?” my mom asked.

“Mostly,” I said.

“That’s good. It’s something you wanted to prioritize.”

I nodded.

“I’d like—” She stood straighter, but she wavered a bit. She reached out, and for a moment, I almost pulled away. Then I caught her, because I wasn’t such a horrible daughter that I’d let my injured mother fall.

The mother I’d injured.

I gripped her arm and I focused on that grip, looking down at her arm and my hand.

The apartment was still relatively dark, lit only by the hallway light and living room light. Through the kitchen, the big window showed the snowstorm outside, white snowflakes against black.

“Why are you pulling away?” my mother asked me.

“It’s stupid,” I told her.

“It doesn’t feel stupid.”

“Okay,” Crystal butted in. “What do you say we get some coffee in us? Bit of food?”

“Victoria said she wanted to do her physio routine before eating.”

“That’s an option,” Crystal said, artificially cheerful. “Auntie Carol, maybe you and I could put coffee on and prep some food, Victoria can do her thing?”

“I’d rather Victoria tell me what happened,” my mother said. “Because I thought we were mending bridges, and all of a sudden—”

She didn’t sound like my mother. No sternness, no strength, no fierceness.

She’d seemed better when we’d been at the prison, in the company of Amy and Mark.