“So you say,” Ashley said, “while riding on a train through a city in the post-apocalypse. Just one of many shattered, damaged worlds.”

“Cute.”

The train slowed. Presley was at the door, joining the group that was ready to depart.

“I’d like to tell her,” I said, my voice quiet. “Even if we called it an injury, so you weren’t revealing something vital.”

“You really care about this.”

“Yes,” I said. “Don’t you?”

“I care,” she said. “I don’t want to lie and look weak while you lie to look better.”

I tensed.

“You’re strong, yes,” she said, her voice barely audible. She took off her sunglasses. “Poised? I think it’s an act. An effective act, the kind that becomes reality after enough time. But not enough time has passed. Fair? We’ll see. But fearless?”

She made the smallest of scoffing sounds. The train came to a stop.

I started to respond, but there was a hollow feeling in my mouth and throat, where the words were supposed to be. I closed my mouth, then said, just as quiet, “She needs that lie.”

Ashley stared me down.

“Frankly,” I said, still quiet, angry now, “you come across worse and smaller as a person when you say no to something that costs you nothing than you do by admitting you’re disabled.”

“Temporarily disabled,” she said. “You’re wrong. I can’t think of anything worse than groveling before a child and telling her I’m weak when I’m the very opposite. I could kill everyone on this train if it came down to it. One after the other. By the time I made my way to the next train car, they would be ready for me, and it wouldn’t matter.”

I tensed as heads turned. They weren’t responding to the words. Only the emotion behind them.

Had I just provoked her into another rage on a relatively crowded train?

Would my next words? Would my silence? Would leaving? Staying?

“She doesn’t know that it’s only temporary,” I said. “She just thinks there’s something wrong. With you or with her.”

“Let her,” Ashley said. “Do what you want, but don’t make me regret telling you anything.”

I looked over to the side. The people had departed the train, Presley included, and the ones boarding had mostly filed in.

“It’s too late anyway,” Ashley said. “Another face we’ll never see again, that probably won’t make any ripples.”

I stood from my seat. “I’ll be back.”

“Whatever.”

Glancing back, making sure she wasn’t about to go on a rampage as she had threatened, I ducked and pushed past the crowd, hurrying to the door. Tristan touched my shoulder as I passed him.