Abigala wakes me.

I do not know why the noise does not, but she is the one who shakes me awake. Her eyes are wide and she looks down at me. “Aber,” she says softly, but her voice is full of panic. “You have to go.”

“What?” I say, my mind and voice blurry. She hits me gently on the arm. “They got Mom.”

They got Mom.

“What about Dad?” I say, sitting straight up, and she nods, her lips pressed together in a grim line. “Please. You know you need to run.”

“What about the boys?” I ask, feeling a knot in the pit of my stomach as I push back my covers, and a loud bang comes from outside our door. Abigala winces. “I’ll get them.”

“I’ll help,” I say, and she grabs my arm. “No.”

“No?”

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“No,” she says softly, her eyes wide. “You remember what they told you. You’re a boy.”

“I’m eighteen,” I say. “I can handle myself. They’re not. They can’t.”

I twist out of her grasp and push through the door of our bedroom that doesn’t lead to the front entrance. That’s where the noise is coming from; that’s where my parents’ bedroom is. This is where our stowaways are.

Abigala follows, her face awash with anxiety, but helps me shake the boys awake. Some of them are children and some are men, young as ten, old as thirty. They listen to us. The older ones start to help, but Abigala pushes them out the door first. “They’ll send you back,” she whispers to them as she shoves their arm. “Go, go, go.”

She is eighteen as well; she is a girl yet she is a woman. She reminds them of their wives. They listen.

We send the very young ones out next. Abigala and I manage to get every male over eighteen and under fourteen out of the house before the door blows in.

She winces. A woman strides in. Her hair is blonde, unlike mine or Abigala’s. It’s pulled up tight in a bun, not a single strand out of place, and there isn’t a single wrinkle in her suit. I don’t like her.

She nods to Abigala. One of the people clothed all in black with guns on their back takes her arm. She says, “Wait.”

The woman shakes her head at her. She looks desperately at me. “Aber, my brother-”

She holds her hand up, and Abigala falls silent. The person leads her out. The others follow until there is just one of them left, one of me, and a few teenage boys behind me. She runs her eyes over me. “Aberworth Ahman.”

I don’t answer. She takes it as one, and smiles. “You look just like your sister.”

She nods to the person in black left. We are escorted away.