Outside of when she’d—you know—been one, Emilia hadn’t spent a lot of time around children—when would she have? She’d known a few people who had kids during the war, but it wasn’t like the kids were on the battlefield with them. Their parents told stories, she’d smiled politely at the photos they shared. A few of those kids had lived on base with their parents, but she’d rarely seen them. Their unit was always so busy, and any leisure time went to more… pleasurable things. And research. And training. And staring into space, more often than she’d care to admit.

Then, Alliance Ridge had happened. Alliance Ridge had changed everything about the war, and those few children had been sent away to relatives, or the multitude of homes set up for war orphans. They hadn’t had much relaxation after that, either.

Some of her war buddies had had kids in the decade since, but Emilia didn’t see them through more than photos, shared in group chats she only occasionally glanced at. Nettie used to send photos of her kids, but eventually, she’d stopped—had given up communicating with someone as flaky as she’d become. Rafe still sent her photos of Nettie and Charles’ children, snuggled into his grumpy lap. They were cute, although Rafe had complained more than a few times about how spoiled they were.

“The oldest is the worst of Charles and Nettie combined,” Rafe had grumbled recently—if you could consider nearly three years earlier recent—during a rare call between the two of them. It had been the anniversary of Alliance Ridge. The entire world was mourning, and neither of them could take it, so they called and chatted and pretended nothing was different about that specific day and hour.

“Oh fucking stars,” she had laughed, listing off the traits about their friends that she had always found the most aggravating.

“That, and more. They’re all little monsters. Resilient as fuck, though. I didn’t really realize how unstoppable kids are.”

She had hummed, taken a sip of the expensive drink she’d gotten at one of the campus cafés. It had struck her in that moment, just as it struck her again now, just how different Rafe was. As a child, she had certainly known how resilient some of her peers were, how fragile others were. How they were raised. Base personality. D-Levels, once those were revealed. All those things played a part.

Then again, she’d grown up so different from Rafe. Her first home had been one filled with children from all walks of life, all D-Levels and social classes. Some remembered their parents—remembered love stolen from them, or fists pounded into them. Others knew nothing but those cold walls, and their caretaker’s fake smiles, empty eyes and strict rules. Rafe and his siblings had grown up in a vacuum, its seal only cracked when she’d fallen into their life and dragged them out of that house—out of the loneliness and separation that generations of their family had suffered.

It seemed a bit much to think herself so important that she was the thing that had changed over a thousand years of inadvertent separation, but she had been, and she had been able to be that because of her own resiliency—because of her own ability to push boundaries and not accept no. Luckily, that no hadn’t lasted long, but the uneasy looks from other adults when she’d brought her new friends around had lasted all her life—had still been present on the faces of so many people the last time she’d seen the people she’d grown up around, in the waning days of the war.

How Rafe, whose family had faced so much condemnation and suspicion for generations, couldn’t see how resiliency was built into his upbringing, she had no idea. Genetics, she supposed. Rafe and Malcolm had always brushed off looks and whispers about them with the ease of people who really didn’t give a shit. Their youngest brother, on the other hand…

“Not going out to party?”

The voice had startled Emilia out of her conversation with Rafe about how work was going, his voice falling silent as her Censor notified him someone was talking to her.

“Ah, no…” Emilia had said, smiling as painlessly as she could manage at Professor A. “Not enough money to enjoy myself,” she had lied, as though her hand wasn’t wrapped around the most expensive drink available on campus.

The old man had raised an eyebrow, unwilling to give her the lie. Annoying. He could have wandered away—said goodnight and left her alone like she wanted to be. Why had he even been there? She still didn’t know. She might have still been in a public area of campus, but it wasn’t a well trafficked one on a busy day, and days like that—days of importance to the war—certainly weren’t busy ones on campus.

Almost everyone went out on days like that—on the days that marked the best and more horrific days of the war. People knew, even if they’d never talked about it, that Alliance Ridge had been a turning point in the war—in the mentality of their unit. They’d been monsters before that day, they were even worse after. Days like this should be solemn, but a combination of the military pushing everything war related into a celebration of sacrifice and hope, and that undying knowledge that without Alliance Ridge, the war may never have ended…

Well, where the mornings were for sadness and reflection, the evening became a celebration and nearly no one else had been lingering around boring old campus. No one, but the vets. It didn’t matter if they had never been to Alliance Ridge, if they’d never even met anyone from their unit—and most people hadn’t—or hadn’t yet joined until the latter part of the war. Nearly every vet hated these days—hated the way the government had skewed public perception of it and the way the public treated them.

The way people who hadn’t served treated them.

For as old as Professor A was, as far as she could tell, the man hadn’t served. If he had, it wasn’t on the front—wasn’t in any job that would have required the training that had beaten inescapable habits into them. There were plenty of jobs like that, and given the man’s experience with technology and his ability to design something like the data-recovery program, it would have been easy to assume it had worked behind the scenes.

When she’d sent Rafe a picture of her teacher, however, he hadn’t known the man. Rafe had known practically everyone who worked war tech, through his own work for D-Tect and the military. Even if he hadn’t known Professor A personally, he would have known his reputation. He didn’t, and a search through Rafe’s records revealed he either hadn’t served or had been part of a secret project, one even Rafe didn’t have access to.

“Why aren't you out?” she had found herself asking, hoping the man would tell her—let some secret about himself slip. The man was too mysterious, even what records Rafe could get on him filled with vague statements and blank spaces. Not so much that it was suspicious—thousands of years of records erased during the war, right?—but certainly enough that Emilia had been able to feel a scratch of curiosity running through her.

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If she was being honest with herself, even several years on, and with no more information about the man than she had that night, she still felt the itch to dig into him. Ask around. Hack into Astrapan and get their facts about the man.

The man had smiled. Not quite the smile that brought students tumbling to his bed, but close enough that Emilia had had to swallow down the longing to scratch that itch of curiosity and demand her Censor not let her consent to sex with the man—not tonight, anyways. Tonight was too heavy.

“It isn’t only veterans who find this day difficult,” he had said, voice empty of accusation that she was one such veteran. His eyes had met hers. They had looked sad, in the distant sort of way. “I lived in the area when I was far younger. It was only for a short time, but I still knew civilians who died.”

“Oh…” Emilia had breathed out, deflating slightly. “Sorry.” She had almost told him that she’d known civilians too—known dozens of innocent, defenceless faces of those killed at Alliance Ridge. She’d lived there so long, after all, and gotten to know the locals, known a few from visits to the area when she was younger as well.

She hadn’t said anything, and he’d nodded goodnight and wandered off, stride lazy in a way that always reminded her of something not quite that of a Penn’s sub-30.

“It’s funny,” she had laughed into the silence of their ongoing call.

“What?”

“I always thought myself a resilient child, but turns out I’m a pretty fucking fragile adult.”

Silence had met her, Rafe’s existence vibrating around her brain the only reminder that he was still there.

“Do you want to meet up?” he had finally asked, quiet and unsure in a way she always hated. He’d been like that since their late 20s, although the frequency had lessened over the years of war, before rising into a near constant thing following her disappearance.

One day, their relationship would settle, and they’d return to the friends they had once been, sure and confident in their every word and request. They couldn’t be that now, not when her moods shifted and fear of meeting the past pressed down on her so often.

“Sure,” she had managed to say, because the fear of seeing an old friend’s face was far less than the fear of breaking alone.

A moment later, Rafe had been there. A single spark away.

“Want to get out of here?” he had asked, posture rigid in a way that didn’t suit him. “Go somewhere… else,” he had finished lamely, because they both knew that fun wouldn’t suit the mood of the day, and yet, they both needed something light and cheerful.

“Sparker’s choice,” she had teased, holding up grabby hands like a helpless child, demanding to be hauled up.

Her friend had rolled his eyes, but grabbed hold of her and off they went, vanishing into the aether for not just a few hours, but days. There was a school break, so why not? It had been fun, and that made the guilt build within her. Emilia had never told Rafe about that—about the guilt his gift of time and friendship had given her—but she was sure he knew that was why she was avoiding him now. Brushing off his hands when they reached towards her.

She shouldn’t have told him not to visit her—shouldn’t have rejected his offer to come mitigate the pink tide himself.

She was more resilient than that.

If these children could continue to stand and fight for their and their friend’s lives, she could face her friend’s kindness and love.

Emilia shook herself out of her wandering thoughts, little bits of future intentions setting into her. Around her, the children under her care failed to cook, smiles plastered over most of their faces, nonetheless. A few scowled at their ingredients, mixing and melding wrong, even as the older kids read recipes that had been bestowed upon them by the labyrinth.

Through all their failure, they still kept trying. Most of them, anyways. A few of the kids had given up, some in anger, others in apology. Rather shockingly, everyone was understanding of their forfeiture of the challenge. When she was little, almost none of the kids she knew were nice to quitters. They teased, biting words leaving their lips until fists were thrown and adults were yanking them apart.

They were not good kids, in either her first home or her second. Then again, the first one had practically encouraged toxic competition, while the second… well. Her parents hadn’t encouraged competition, but they and all their neighbours were at the top of their fields. The adults encouraged skill and resiliency, and to their little minds that had meant dying before you quit.

That probably wasn’t the best mentality, and when the labyrinth had bestowed them with writing instruments and paper to make planning and noting recipe alterations easier, and she’d discovered that she could not only read the local language now—thank you, weird {Blood Tattoo}—but also write? Well, Emilia wasn’t about to write anything about perseverance and never giving up. These kids didn’t need that—didn’t need her to introduce some weird mentality from her own world to them.

Reintroducing it to herself, though? She could do that. So many bits of her had been lost over the last decade—over the last three, she supposed. Things torn away by the war, by death, by cruel words from people she considered her friends.

They weren’t her friends, and she wasn’t a very good friend to the people she still loved and missed—to people who still breathed and lived, missing her.

⸂You have a funny look on your face,⸃ Miira noted. The girl was standing across from her, the two of them responsible for making some of the more complicated pieces of their edible water slide.

Emilia blinked at the resilient little girl. They’d chatted while they cooked—or, Miira had chatted while Emilia occasionally signed or scratched out questions at her. The local girl was eleven and had lost her family in the chaos of the stampede.

Miira didn’t think they were alive.

⸂They were there one minute, and gone the next. There… there was a lot of blood… where they were.⸃ Watery eyes had glared down at their project, her hands shaking as she assembled tubes for the slide. It was a delicate job, one requiring far more attention to detail and patience than most of the children had.

⸂I’m waiting for it to hit me,⸃ she had added when Emilia asked how she was doing. The girl had shaken herself, chest expanding as she sucked in a long, grounding breath. ⸂We don’t have time for it to hit me now. So it won’t.⸃

Okay, so resiliency and stubbornness, not that Emilia could fault her for stubbornly avoiding dealing with the loss of her family. It would come, just as it had come for the children still staring absently into space, just as it came for the kids who occasionally burst into tears for moments of time before forcing themselves to stop, dirty sleeves running over damp cheeks and snotty noses.

Kids broke and mended so fast, it was impressive. Many of them pulled themselves together better than soldiers on the battlefield. Single-minded focus—those of them who had possessed the ability to focus and compartmentalize had always fared better on the field. They were better at forcing those feelings away, but she knew first hand the pain of doing it too long.

All those feelings would crash down on these little hearts sooner or later, and the longer they waited, the worse it would be. While it would be nothing compared to the decades she and others had avoided their grief and regret and guilt for during the war, the faster they let it out, the better.

Key had said the labyrinths were usually three to five stages. Hopefully, this one would be on the shorter side, because who knew what awaited them on the other side.

Who knew where they would go, and what they would face, once they were free of this prison.