“I saw scenes from our childhood. Stuff to do with Mom, Uncle Neil, and Dean. You were there.”

“Fucking up?” she asked.

“Nah,” I said. “Just there. Talking about Roaraxia and fantasy books.”

“The talk,” Amy said. Still without turning around.

Dot crawled up Amy and perched on her shoulder, sitting backwards so she could watch me. Wearing purple overalls with no shirt.

“Yeah. The talk. I’d mostly forgotten.”

“I didn’t. I couldn’t pick up another book in the Roar series without thinking about Mom getting on my case in front of everyone. Amy with no friends, no hobbies, she’s small.”

I looked at my mom. My mom was frowning.

“Thanks for doing this. Talking to the therapist,” I said. I avoided using his name, so the conflict of interest wouldn’t be so jarringly obvious a conflict. If he hadn’t told her he’d seen me, I wouldn’t provide the missing piece of information.

“You don’t need to do this,” Amy said.

“Do what?”

“Talk to me, like it’s you fulfilling your end of the deal. Don’t worry. I’ll keep my appointments, I’ll talk about my feelings, I’ll—”

“The world’s ending, Amy,” I told her. “Two hours. You could sit down to watch some movies and the world would end before you’re done.”

“People will save it.”

“Multiple precogs are locked into that end result. Titan Fortuna, the Simurgh. It seems pretty inevitable at this point.”

The door creaked as she stopped leaning against it. She turned to face me. I didn’t look directly at her, instead staring down the long aisle or ‘street’ that ran between the solid buildings on this level of Cauldron’s dungeon.

“You really believe that,” she said.

“I know it.”

“No. That’s… no. I refuse to believe that.”

“We could use some raw power. Talking to you, like this, it’s scary, but—”

“I’m not—”

She didn’t finish the sentence, but I could tell how tense she was.

“But I thought I’d bite the bullet. See if you were willing. I can’t think of any others who really fit the bill for what we want, who are still around. Lab Rat said you understood a lot of what was happening before others did. Both times the world ended. As scary as it is to do this… we could use insight. We could use your power. We’re trying to stop a greater lifeform’s life cycle. You shape life.”

“My power stops where the passengers begin,” she said. “You know that.”

“We’ve figured out ways to tweak powers. I’ve altered mine. Depending on what you were willing to do, we could alter yours.”

“And the last time I broke rules I created Khepri. She played a big part in stopping the last end of the world. But things are different now.”