“They’ll be doing it to survive,” Screamer purred, as she walked around King, her body conforming to the line of his, like she was a pole dancer and he was the pole. She laid her head along his chest. Her voice sounded like it was spoken from just past Kurt’s ear. His attempts to track the sound and its origins gave him that feeling that made him worry he would get a headache later. She opened her mouth again, “It’s a good reason.”

She heard everything nearby, in an area that reached much farther than the leash King had given them, and she was loyal to King. It was why a communication and the corresponding plan had to rely purely on flecks of blood on an ear and a fierce look.

The boys didn’t move as King emerged from the window, the corrugated metal groaning at the man’s weight. He was tall, and he worked out relentlessly.

“Look out there and what do you see?”

“The sun is set,” Kurt volunteered.

“Past that.”

Kurt’s power started calculating the distance to the stars that were still visible, with the sun’s light still refracting across the atmosphere at one end of the sky.

“Civilization?” Jack asked.

Oh. Past in the other sense. Metaphor? Was that metaphor? He wasn’t so sure of things like language, people, or deeper meanings.

“What happens in the future? Think, Jacob, my boy.”

The threat was implicit. He expected an answer, and the way King worked, he wanted his answer.

“The powers are going to keep showing up, in greater numbers. Something critical is going to break, or a real monster will show up. Then it all collapses. It’s too fragile,” Jacob said, still holding the handkerchief to his nose, glaring, but with his back turned to King so King wouldn’t think he was being insolent.

“It’s too soon to tell if the powers will keep coming at a steady rate, or if things will plateau,” Kurt said.

“Everything plateaus,” Jacob said. “Everything declines. This ends with civilization in ruins, most of humanity dead, and the remainder bleeding and scared.”

“We’ll make an impact,” King said. “We’ll decide what plateaus and what declines.”

Jacob nodded.

What Jacob had said was apparently the right answer.

King crossed the roof, and placed his great paw of a hand against the side of Jacob’s head. Jacob still stood at the roof’s edge, four floors of building stretching between him and the ground. He didn’t flinch, and he didn’t move a muscle, even as King caressed the side of his head, in what could have been something approaching gentleness from the meanest son of a bitch Kurt had ever known… or the prelude to a push.

Did I think too soon?