“I honestly don’t know,” Missy admitted. She was a bit annoyed with the conversation. She’d had too many ones like it. “Miss Militia doesn’t. Neither do Defiant or Dragon.”

“You can’t be that, Miz,” her mom said.

“I know. Not until I can get an appointment with Defiant and get a chip in my brain like the other team leaders, and make it so I don’t have to sleep ever again.”

“That’s not funny,” her mom said.

Missy smiled, glancing out the window. The car had been stopped for a few minutes now. People were milling around.

“It is a joke?”

“Yeah.”

“I want you to have a full life. I had so many doubts, when we agreed to send you to the Wards…”

“I know, Mom,” Missy replied. She wondered if she could get away with opening the door and escaping now. Lying and saying she was in a rush. She’d heard her mom talk about this a hundred times. The doubts her mom had experienced. The agony her mom had felt. How scared her mom had been. How her mom had waited up at night.

“I feel like you never came back after we left you there.”

“I know, but I’m here. Seven years and one month later.”

“And you got promoted. Does that mean more danger?”

Missy tilted her head to one side, giving her mother a searching look. Her mom didn’t tend to ask about this stuff. She’d glossed over the promotion a minute ago, and Missy had figured that was it.

Her mom prodded her, “You’re not answering.”

“I was there for Leviathan, Mom. And the Slaughterhouse Nine. And Scion. And the Titans. And the Simurgh. What do you think I’m going to be doing?”

“I don’t know. But I don’t know about a lot of this stuff. It feels like you’re getting further away.”

“You don’t usually ask about it. You did when I was a kid, but then you made some comments in the W-Div meeting coordinating between the PRT and you and my teachers, saying Dad had custody of me and I’d started staying late and working longer and you were worried…”

“That was nothing. It was one comment. If your dad had deigned to attend he could have said something.”

“It was a thing, Mom. I wanted to sink down into my seat and scamper under the table to get to the door, I was so embarrassed. Because they have mandatory reporting, and the Youth Guard picked it up. The PRT staff was walking on eggshells and being super careful with me for months after.”

“I can’t understand how they’d be that bothered by you working overtime and then let you suit up and go fight Leviathan.”