“I don’t know what happened, Mother, but something’s changed,” Rhuni said as she walked to the door. “You didn’t used to be like this.”

“Don’t you care about your family?” Helyana tried.

“Of course I do. I love you and Mekha—but I consider the other humans to be my family, too. I won’t abandon them, no matter what you try to say. Even if it’s ultimately pointless… maybe I can still do something. Get rid of a few demons, at least, so that everyone here is a little safer.”

“I still haven’t finished all of your repairs, you’re not ready to go out there.”

“I believe I’m good enough for a final stand.” Rhuni, with her hand over the doorknob, turned back to look at Mekha. “Please, stay with Mother and the other humans. Make sure nothing happens to them.”

“You better come back,” Mekha mumbled, the closest an Automation could come to crying. “R-remember what we talked about earlier? Mother’s going to show us outside of Cyrene. Both of us. So—so you can’t leave forever. Alright?”

Rhuni gave a sad smile. “I’d be happy just knowing that you’ll have the chance to go at all.” As she left, she said, “I’ll do what I can from outside. I’m trusting you to keep the people inside safe.”

Helyana was about to argue, but Rhuni was already gone. Surprisingly, the thought of calling Automations to stop her hadn’t yet crossed Helyana’s mind—that came when it was too late to do anything. Maybe, deep down, she knew Rhuni was right.

Not all of these humans were bad; Helyana still had something to lose if they were gone. But… once they were gone? Well, that was a different story…

“We need to make sure all of the humans can get into the estate,” Helyana decided.

“But what about what you said earlier?” Mekha asked. It didn’t sound like he wanted to disbelieve her but, well, she couldn’t blame him. She was a little disbelieving of it herself.

She tried to shrug it off, though. “Rhuni can’t be the only one doing something out there. She’s certain that we’ll have her back from here. We can’t let her down.”

Then Mekha nodded. “What do you want me to do?”

“I want you to stay here and try to give yourself some basic repairs. I’m afraid I’m not going to have much time to do anything more complex, but a little is better than nothing at this point. I’ll go and welcome the humans in. I’ll try to gauge how many working Automations there are, too, and get them to guard the estate.”

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

“Stay safe, Mother,” Mekha said. He was already getting ready to complete his task. “I’ll try to do this quickly. The kids know me better, so they… might calm down a little more, if I’m there with them.”

“Just don’t try to rush anything here,” she instructed. “You understand how a rushed job can be just as bad as no job at all.” Then she left the workshop, and started towards the estate’s front entrance.

She barked orders to the Automations all the way there—how that one should go and prepare something, or the one over there should guard the other entrances. If she could help it, she wasn’t going to let Mekha leave her sight once he was done with his repairs.

She’d never intended on actually going outside—as she got close to the door, she could hear the crying, and a not-so-distant sound of claw on metal—and, luckily, she didn’t have to. All she had to do was open the doors, and the people of Cyrene came flooding in. There were a lot of them, but… she knew it wasn’t all of them. She shut the door again as soon as she was sure that they were all inside.

The mayor walked up to her. “I can’t thank you enough, Helyana, for allowing us all to come. You’ve done many great things for us. I don’t know how we could ever repay you…”

“Let’s worry about surviving this attack first, shall we?” she returned in a much more blunt tone.

He looked around and realized something. “Where’s Rhuni and Mekha?”

“Rhuni… left a couple of moments ago, she’s going to try to deter the demons. Mekha’s doing some maintenance in my workshop.” Then she quickly changed the subject so she didn’t have to think about it. “You’ve got more authority than I do—can you get everyone into the grand hall? It’s right down that hallway. If there’s not enough room—there might not be, seeing all of you now—then the dining room and kitchen are nearby. It doesn’t matter whether or not we’re all packed together—if the demons got in here, we’ll all die no matter how far apart we were. But it’ll make it easier for the Automations to protect us.”

The mayor nodded grimly. He turned to the citizens and announced, “Alright, all of you! Follow me. Miss Helyana has been kind enough to let us stay here, and she’s given me further instructions on where we should go.”

“Automations are already preparing some food and medicine,” Helyana offered as more of an aside. Never mind the fact she’d lived alone—well, as the only one who needed to eat—all these years and she hadn’t been one to stockpile supplies. She doubted what she had would be enough to meet the needs of even the youngest dozen of kids, let alone how many seemed to need it.

Helyana followed them all there, as the one at the very back of the group. She gave more orders to more Automations—these being to defend the humans at all costs. Once it seemed that all the humans had settled, she was about to return to her workshop to check on Mekha.

But it seemed he’d already finished, because she saw him just as she turned around.

“Do you think your repairs will hold?” she asked. It was practically the Automation version of asking a human whether they could still fight despite their wounds.

“Yeah,” he mumbled, though he didn’t sound too certain. After a moment, he asked a question of his own. “Everything’s… going to be okay, right, Mother?”

“Of course.” But she’d hesitated, and he certainly picked up on it.

“I… guess we’ve just got to accept that this is all we can do, huh?”

She nodded.