She looked over at me. “I’ll reach out to a colleague. I’ll see what I can do, if that’s okay. Give you some reassurance there.”

“I—” I started.

“Yes?”

“It’s okay, but… if you wanted to reassure me—” I said.

It felt a little less like I could talk about certain topics with her, now.

“If it’s within my power, I’ll try anything,” she said.

“My sister,” I said, my voice soft. “Send someone her way.”

Mrs. Yamada raised one eyebrow.

I knew what she was thinking. She wondered if it was selflessness, or if I was a surprisingly good person. I wasn’t.

“She’s the scariest damn person in the world, Jessica,” I said. “And I don’t think that’s bias. There’s a chance she’s going to do something bad, and she’s so damn powerful, that when and if it happens, it’s going to be so much worse than what happened to me, and it’s going to affect an awful lot more people.”

Daybreak Interlude 1

The truck stopped at the gate, producing the occasional sputter and knocking sound as it sat there. The driver extended a hand out the window, waving for the camera, and the gate opened by way of remotely operated pulley.

It was another minute to the top of the hill, where the truck rolled to a stop in the parking lot, an expanse of gravel without any defined parking spots. The three people within remained where they were, warily observing the restaurant from a distance.

It was a log cabin writ large, the cedars stripped of their bark and stained with something that made them almost glossy, a warm yellow under the sun. The third floor was half the size of the other two, allowing the other half of what would have been the third floor to be a rooftop patio instead. A series of tables was scattered around the building, some close together and others a considerable distance away, as if they were trying to escape into the woods. Beyond the building was a cliff, and a vast expanse of forests, hills, mountains, and a small lake.

“Nice view,” Moose said, from the backseat.

Linc was settled in the passenger seat, reclining a bit with his seat angled back and his legs folded under him. With Moose in the back, he’d had to slide his seat as far forward as it could go, and it didn’t leave him much legroom. “Just think, past that view there isn’t nothing at all. If you headed straight ahead and kept going, you might not find any habitation until you ended up on the backside of this settlement here.”