I couldn’t believe my eyes. What I was seeing was impossible, but I wanted it to be true so badly it made my heart ache in my chest.

“Mom?”

My Mom stood there, just as I remembered her, arms outstretched and a smile on her face. When she spoke, it made my chest feel warm and brought a smile to my lips.

“I’ve come home, sweetie.”

I took a step forward, and then another. I moved to embrace her, and something changed. There was a feeling of wrongness and danger, and I recoiled. This wasn't my mother. Then It was covered in too many eyes and mouths and Its hair came alive like snakes. When It spoke, It was echoed and Its words distorted by a hundred mouths full of needle teeth.

“I promised I would.”

It reached out to pull me into an embrace of needles and hungry mouths, and I couldn't move as I was dragged closer and closer to this thing pretending to be my mother. I screwed my eyes shut as terror coursed through me, and braced for the agony that was sure to come.

I awoke with a short, sharp scream, drenched in sweat and breathing heavily, heart hammering in my chest. It was just another nightmare, nothing more. I calmed myself, breathing evenly as I slowed my racing heartbeat. I wrinkled my nose as I felt my nightclothes cling to me uncomfortably. Gross. I’d need a shower for sure.

"Sweetheart?" My Dad’s tired question came to me through the door, a note of concern clear in his muffled voice. I winced. Had I woken him up? I took a moment to collect myself and spoke.

"Yeah, Dad. I'm fine. Just a nightmare."

"Again?"

"Yeah.”

I could hear his sigh on the other side of the door.

"Alexis, I don't think the therapy is enough."

He was wrong. I was feeling better, and my therapist was great. Also, he, of all people, had no place talking about who needed what therapy.

"Dad," I started to object before he spoke over me.

"I'm not saying you need to stop seeing Doctor Watanabe, but maybe something new would help? We can reach out to the Academy and see what their rules are about support animals. I've heard that animals can help with…" He trailed off, and I swallowed past a lump in my throat.

"Yeah, that might be nice. Thank you, Dad."

He walked away, I assumed to go make breakfast, and I got up. I grabbed a change of clothes and left my room, my door hissing open and then shutting behind me. I passed two rooms, one that was my Dad’s, and the other which was empty. In the bathroom at the end of the hall, I showered quickly, not wanting the water to shut off partway through washing my hair. When I finished and dried off, I got dressed in my clean clothes and chucked my dirty clothes and the used towel into the recycling chute in the bathroom. Grabbing my hairbrush, I ran it through my hair a few times and figured I looked presentable in the mirror.

Breakfast was awkward and quiet. Neither of us tried to make conversation, eating silently. The omelets tasted awful, and I made a face at the chalky texture. Dad had been buying the powdered egg substitute again, and it showed. He must have seen my expression because he smiled, and said, “Don’t worry, I’m sure the food at the Academy will be better than my cooking.”

I wasn’t sure what to say, so I just shrugged. His smile fell a bit, and we went back to eating in silence. I finished first, and threw my paper plate and cup into the recycler, along with the plastic utensils. I stood facing the recycler for a moment, my back to my Dad, and I felt him looking at me. I knew if I turned, his expression would be sad and resigned. I couldn’t bring myself to look at him.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

As I turned to go to my room without looking at him, all I could think to say was, “I have to leave in about ten minutes,” I lied. Really, it was closer to an hour.

He hummed in acknowledgment, and I walked to my room. The door hissed open and closed behind me, and I exhaled shakily. I hated this. I knew he didn’t want me to go, he’d said as much already to my face. But it was my choice, my decision. I was going to become a warrior like my mother, and I wasn’t going to let him guilt me out of following in her footsteps. I'd leave, and I'd be free.

I didn’t have much to pack, just my hairbrush and a few physical photos that my parents had made into physical copies back when we had money for that kind of thing. I didn’t have any non-fabricated clothes to pack, so the only thing left was my datapad, which I folded closed and tucked into its case.

I packed a change of clothes, the cheap fabricated kind, in case the fabricator queue was long when I got to the Academy. I’d waited until the last minute to pack, mainly because I didn’t want Dad shooting sad looks at a packed travel case every time he came to my door. He wasn’t going to change my mind, but it still felt bad.

I finished packing, snapped my case shut, and turned to face my room. I took in my familiar walls, still lined with music posters I hadn’t bothered to take down. The bed I’d slept in since I was old enough for my parents to let me out of the crib. My dresser and the old box I used to keep toys in before we sold them after Mom- I cut that line of thought off. That was one of my biggest problems, thinking too much.

I’d lived here my entire life, but I was about to leave it behind. I might never see this again except when I visit. If I visit. Honestly, I wasn’t sure if I would. I slipped my communicator and earpods into my back pocket, picked up my case, and walked through my door, which hissed open, and then shut. I walked past the empty room, where I knew my mother’s old things were still untouched, and had the fleeting thought that once I left, there would be two empty rooms. I shut that thought down as well.

My dad looked up at me from where he was still seated at the table, the rest of his omelet untouched. I internally winced. I hoped he didn’t backslide and start forgetting to eat again when I was gone. Guilt coursed through me, but I centered myself and reminded myself what Doctor Watanabe had said. ‘You aren’t responsible for safeguarding anyone’s happiness but your own.’

For some reason, that didn’t make me feel any better. Unbidden, the image flashed through my mind of my already skinny Dad’s ribs outlined beneath a work shirt that hung loosely off him as he stared hollowly at a series of spreadsheets. Not eating or sleeping, just working until he couldn’t, because there was nothing else for him here. Nothing but the idea I might come back. I forced myself to stop thinking and breathed deeply through my nose. There was no point in catastrophizing.

He smiled weakly, and it didn’t reach his eyes. “Hey, kiddo. Done packing already?”

“Yes,” I answered, and when my clipped reply made him wilt, I couldn’t take it anymore. “I have to leave now,” I lied.

“I thought you still had a few minutes?” He asked, and it was cruel of me to think so, but he looked pathetic.

I wanted to leave so intensely that I nearly ran to the door, but I forced myself to walk over to him. Slinging my free arm around him in the most awkward side hug imaginable, I found myself at a complete loss for words. How do you say goodbye to someone you barely know anymore? Someone you thought you could trust to be there for you, who let you down when you needed them most. Was that fair of me? I didn’t know.

After a second that dragged on for too long, I blurted, “Goodbye, Dad.”

I released him from the side hug and turned to walk to the front door. My footsteps sounded loud, even muffled by the awful beige carpet my Mom had picked out herself years ago. Setting my travel case down momentarily, I snagged my respirator and safety belt off the rack, buckled on the belt, and checked the clip and tether. They both looked fine, so I picked up my case and stepped forward, donning my respirator. The front door hissed open and closed behind me. I walked away from our house and towards the nearest moving sidewalk without looking back.

Familiar surroundings drifted by as I was jostled on the moving sidewalk by commuters headed to and from the nearby light rail station. I clutched my case to my chest, unwilling to risk that it might be knocked from my hands and lost underfoot on the packed sidewalk. Everyone was well-behaved today, I noted. None of the typical elbows or shouting, just the murmur of conversation and the whir of the sidewalk as it carried me past a kiosk offering information about the Cylinder’s militia, the Polis Pelters.

I’d always thought that name sounded awful, like some kind of sports team. But, on a good day, that’s what they were. When they weren’t defending against raiders, they were running televised wargames which a lot of people treated as entertainment. To be fair, the Pelters played it up, painting their ships in bright colors and interacting with ‘fans’. They never had to deal with the Trógon, though. That was why the Cylinders paid for the Academy: so that the Trógon were just something you heard about and not the reason you and everyone you knew got nuked.

I arrived at the light rail station well ahead of schedule and found an open bench to wait. As I sat down, I was careful to avoid the raised bumps at set intervals that made anything but sitting extremely uncomfortable. I’d asked my dad why there were bumps, once, and he said it was so people don’t sleep on them. At the time, I didn’t understand why anyone would want to sleep outside. Now, I knew that there were people who didn’t have anywhere else to go. I laid my case down on my lap, careful to keep a hand on it to keep it from sliding off my legs.

I looked around at my surroundings, taking in the familiar light rail station for what might be the last time. I spotted the scuffed patch of safety rail I used to wait at with my parents whenever they took me here. I remembered it mostly because it was built into the side of a fast food restaurant my parents would take me to when we had a particularly long wait ahead of us. There were a few advertising posters pasted to the wall above the rail that hadn't changed at all over the years, except that they were more faded than before. Most of the ads, though, had been taken down for recycling and replaced by new ones.

I fidgeted with the latch of my case. This was really happening, and all that separated me from my future was about… I shifted in my uncomfortable seat, wincing as one of the bumps dug into the back of my leg. I fished out my communicator and checked the time. Thirty minutes. Thirty minutes was a long time to be alone with my thoughts. I slipped out my earpods and popped them free from their case. They were, along with my datapad and communicator, one of the only pieces of electronics I owned. They were also an excellent investment, having only been refabricated once in the three or four years I’d owned them.

I popped them into my ears, lifted my communicator, and selected some music. It was the schlocky AI-produced stuff that the streaming services were pushing, but it was mind-numbing enough to barely distract me from my thoughts while providing some form of stimulus I could tolerate. As generic piano chords filled my ears, I looked up into the smog-filled air. If I squinted, I could see the other side of the Cylinder above me, a city in the sky.