MIRA

It was still dark outside when I woke up, but the sun was just beginning to glimmer on the horizon. I glanced around me—Claire was still asleep in her bed.

I moved softly and slowly, as to not wake her. Or anyone else in the house, really.

It was dark inside, and so very quiet—just like the Atomic Energy compound was at night. Perhaps it was this eerily quiet anywhere, when you were awake when you weren't supposed to be.

I passed the living room and slipped out the front door, only stopping to grab a hoodie off of one of the hooks. I drew it close to myself as I took a spot on the rail of the porch.

"Couldn't sleep either?"

I blinked, shaking my head.

Tristan was out here, too, also sitting on the rail of the front porch.

I realized, a beat too late, that the porch lights were already on. He must've done that, I thought.

I rubbed my eyes. "I'm not used to the whole falling in and out of sleep thing. Back at the compound, we were put in sleep tubes, and we were kept in deep sleep for at least eight hours. Really, until they were ready for us to wake up."

"The same tubes they were going to use to kill you, when it's all over?" I could hear the disgust in his voice. "Wow. This really is all screwed up, isn't it?"

"I'm still coming to grips with it myself." I ran a hand through my hair. "I'm still learning how to be a person. I can't imagine what must be happening at Atomic Energy right now."

What were they telling them? Did anyone suspect that Tenebrous had been telling the truth? Were the scientists like Dr. Banning doing something to keep the Sentinels from rebelling, from finding out the truth?

Or were they really all shells inside, like Heretic—my mother— suspected they were?

"You still care about them." He tilted his head and squinted, as if trying to read something.

"Of course I do!" I couldn't help the irritation rising in my voice. "I don't know why anyone would suspect anything else! I grew up with them, I loved them—they were my family."

I bit my lip and glanced around. Nothing moved, no shadows came alive to get me. But I realized I needed to have a little more caution.

"Sorry." I closed my eyes. "At least—the other Sentinels, I still care about. They're victims, just as much as I was. As Verity was."

"I guess I can see that." Tristan looked out at the empty city street. "Hard to see Powerline as a victim, though."

"He was stolen as a baby, just like I was, and given no other choices." I had no idea why I was defending him, as he was the biggest asshole I'd ever met. But it felt right to do so, all the same. "It's harder to pin down how I feel about Dr. Banning."

"Dr. Banning?"

"The doctor that raised and trained my team," I explained. "She didn't have a family—we were her kids, she treated us like we were her children. Somewhat, at least."

There was a sympathetic, pitying smile on Tristan's face.

"Children shouldn't be treated like that."

"I know— it's just—" I struggled to find the right words to make him understand. "She was the closest thing I had to that. At least, until I found out about. . . "

What even to call her?

Heretic was the name burned into my mind for her. But it seemed wrong, to call her that now. Mom and Mother were epithets that would never come easily to me. Lora was probably the name I'd be more comfortable with, even if it made us more into colleagues or cousins than mother and daughter.

I'd have to ask her, the next time I saw her, what she wanted.

"I know how that feels." His hand brushed against where his wound had been. "I'm still trying to wrap my head around—"

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He stopped, shaking his head. "It shouldn't matter. It shouldn't. He didn't raise me—hell, he didn't even know me. He was only interested once it benefitted him."

He looked at his hands, watched as they curled into fists, then splayed out again. "The man who raised me has been in the ground for nearly six years. He's still more my father than Sam Stryker ever will be."

I contemplated that for a moment. Of course I knew the idea, of found family, of adoptive families. But I couldn't say for myself that I felt like Dr. Banning or Lora was more or less my mother. I mean, things were kind of in favor of Lora, for being my birth-mother and not training me as a child soldier to exterminate my own kind.

But it wasn't like I knew Lora all that well outside of blaming her for my best friend's death.

And then there was my father. . . Held prisoner in his own family's manor for almost two decades.

Would he recognize me, if he saw me? Would he want to be a part of my life, when we set him free?

My stomach clenched—family wasn't an assured thing. Not for me. Too easily, I could end up completely alone in the world—and I feared that I already was.

"I don't know how to reconcile it," I finally said. "The woman who from what I heard treated us better than the other Sentinels, and the doctor who was fine with training us to fight and kill others like us, who knew the secret of how it would end."

How could she raise us and love us, when she knew that she would one day kill us after we'd served our purpose?

My blood curdled in my veins, turning as cold as ice.

"You don't have to." Tristan reached out to touch my shoulder. "But you don't have to forgive her, either."

"I won't." I wasn't sure if it was right or wrong. I'd learned a lot about good and evil, since Verity died. Justice as I'd known it, as a means of punishment and revenge—that wasn't right.

Henry had taught me that.

But I didn't know if I could forgive.

All I knew was that I wanted to change things, stop Atomic Energy and Tenebrous so that they couldn't hurt anyone anymore.

And I wouldn't go any further than that.

But I wasn't sure if I'd ever let go of the anger, the wrath that was born of my grief since the day Verity ran, when she realized a truth I was too afraid to.

But that was also a question for the future, as nebulous and terrifying as it was.

"What are you two doing out here this early?"

I glanced behind us to see Henry shutting the front door.

"Just talking," Tristan said.

"Can't sleep, either of us," I added. "Another insomniac?"

"More or less," Henry admitted as he also joined us on the rail. "I can't stop thinking about it. Everything. Tenebrous, Atomic Energy, Dr. Electra—and how it's all connected."

"Everything always goes back to Atomic Energy here." Tristan's grip tightened around the railing, turning his knuckles white.

More light was on the horizon, a sign of good things to come.

"You weren't all having a party without me, were you?" Claire stepped onto the porch.

"Good, everyone's here, then." Tristan smiled, reaching out a hand to Claire, to help us up.

"It is safe, for all of us to be here, right?" Henry asked.

"I'm sure we can handle a tumble into the hydrangeas." Tristan dismissed Henry's concerns with a wave of his free hand.

"It wouldn't be the worst thing we've faced in the last twenty-four hours," I added.

"Or that we will face." Claire's expression was solemn. "I know we spent all night planning how we're going to pull this off, and we have some older heroes to help us. But it seems so impossible."

"So do superpowers and heroes and villains," Henry said. "But we have to try. For our sake—and for everyone else."

"What I wonder is what will happen next?" Claire looked from Tristan to Henry to me. "I mean, I guess we have to survive and there has to be a New Kingsbury left to worry about that—but win or lose, what do we do, after all of this is over?"

Tristan seemed troubled by this. "We were going to hang up the masks and capes."

"But?" Claire looked back to him, with her wide amber eyes.

"But I'm not so sure anymore," Tristan admitted. "I think it's an easy way out, to quit when this is over."

"An easy way out of what?" I didn't quite understand.

"Out of the responsibility, out of the consequences." He let out a heavy sigh. "I haven't been the perfect hero, I'm not Henry."

"That's an understatement," Claire muttered. Still she raised his hand to her lips. A tender, romantic gesture—one I wondered if I would ever experience, someday.

"It gets so complicated, so fast, and it's easy to say that I'm just not cut out for this, that I'm too much like my father to go down this path." He closed his eyes. "But it's not that simple, is it? And that doesn't erase the guilt."

"With great power comes great responsibility," I finished simply.

"They let you watch Spiderman?" Tristan looked up at me, curious.

I shrugged. "Some superhero media was allowed, so we could understand and play into the roles the public was expecting."

"Huh."

"But you do have a point," Claire said, finally re-railing the conversation. "Win or lose, the city's going to need heroes more than ever. If we survive—I guess that's going to be our future, one way or another."

It was grim and exhilarating at the same time.

And it was funny, the four of us sitting on the porch, watching the sun rise. We were also tied to each other, through what our parents had done.

It was like we'd been aligned by some fate, with all the coincidences leading back to one another. Everything had lined up for us to be here, right now.

We heard the door open behind us.

"No more room up here," Claire teased as her step-brother walked out.

"Don't worry, I'm not interested." He smiled, but it was an exhausted expression. "Waiting on some friends."

"Friends?" I asked.

"We need backup, and I happen to know how to contact some of the other heroes in the city." He squinted out on the horizon. "There they are, now."

A car pulled onto the street, and headed towards the Brownings' driveway.

When they pulled in, I recognized the driver as Mood Ring.

And the car was full of other independent heroes.

If Atomic Energy was going to use their army to fight us—then we would have to build our own.