It’s a boy, of course.

The seven of us, me and Nua and Ava, plus Penny and Bayan, plus Sina and Jimmy, sit in a circle and read out loud, for hours. Haywood and Alis just watch and listen and occasionally go out to do work things, but we manage to get through more than a dozen stories over the course of a few hours. Ava always skips her turn to read, instead coming up with numbers to multiply together, and Nua and Jimmy try to race to figure it out. She almost falls asleep with her head in Nua’s lap, and Sina actually does after a few rounds, lying down with his head on a balled-up sweatshirt. But in the early hours of the morning, I think, Alis comes back to us, and says, “Ava, do you want to see the baby?”

Jimmy’s asleep too by this point, curled up on his side on the ground, and Ava opens her eyes. “What?”

“He’s born,” says Alis. “It’s a boy. He and Marissa are both doing really well.”

“Oh, my god,” says Ava quietly, looking at her watch. I look at it too, it’s 6:32 am. Jimmy opens his eyes, looking at me, and I smile a little. Alis looks down at the boys too, and then gestures for me and Ava to come.

He brings us to Marissa and Nerev’s tent, and then leads the boys back to their own. Ava takes a deep breath, and then pushes open the flap. Nua and I hang back, unsure if she wants us, but after a moment I hear Marissa say, “No, come in, come in.”

Nua looks at me, grinning, and ducks into the tent as well. Marissa looks up at us, and Nerev, too. She’s lying in his arms as he leans up against the wall behind their tent, and there’s a bundle of blankets in her arms. Her face is flushed, but she’s smiling, and Nerev is, too. “His name is Julian.”

Ava smiles, but she’s looking at Marissa. After a moment she notices, and laughs. “I’m alright.”

“Good,” says Ava, and Nerev grins, kissing his wife on the side of the head. And Ava looks back at me and Nua, and says again, “I’m not doing that.”

“Never asked you to,” says Nua, and Marissa laughs, and Ava smiles.

She stays with them for a while. She’s made friends with Marissa since she came down here, and now that the baby’s out and sleeping she can handle it. Sloan stays with them, too, and I don’t know what they talk about, those three women and Nerev is with them too, but it’s late when she crawls back into the tent, lying down on the mat between us. Nua’s asleep, but I open one of my eyes and look at her. She sees, adjusting herself on the ground, and says, “Did I wake you up?”

I shrug, and yawn. “Dunno. What were you talking about?”

Ava smiles a little, yawning too, and says, “We’ll talk tomorrow.”

“Ava,” I murmur, but I’m too tired to protest. She just grins, closing her eyes too.

And we all sleep for hours and hours, even without Miss Lilly’s drugs. I don’t know what time it is when we fall asleep and I don’t know what time it is when we wake up, but there’s something different in the air. I don’t know what it is, but I do, it’s the baby. There’s a baby down here now.

Penny and Ava go back to visit Marissa when we’re all awake again, and Nua and I sit with Bayan in the fire forum. He has a proddy stick and is fixing some of the logs in the fire, and Nua is lying on the ground, his hands under his head, staring up at the cement above us, watching the smoke drift into the hole in the ceiling. “Have you ever seen a baby before?”

“I mean, yeah,” I say after a moment. “Haven’t you?”

“I don’t think so,” he says thoughtfully, still staring at the ceiling. His hair is spread out around his head, not quite as long as Penny’s yet but still longer and straighter than mine. “Just, like, on TV.”

Bayan smiles slightly, putting the poker down. Nua says, “Do you think Ava likes babies?”

“I don’t know,” I say with a laugh. “Why?”

He shrugs. “I mean, if Keol wasn’t…” He trails off, and then says, “If whatever was wrong wasn’t, we’d have had some prominent children by now, wouldn’t we?”

“Probably,” murmurs Bayan, and I look at him, thinking of what he said. We were not enough to keep Ava at home at the beach house, her husbands were not enough to lure her home over the lure of Penny. Of course she sent back for us, and if I had known what was going on I would not have doubted her. But if she had a baby at home, or in a lab somewhere waiting for her, if she had Keol’s baby, I don’t know if she would have been able to leave. Keol had dark hair and tannish skin. Nua has pale skin and blond hair like Ava’s, and I have darker skin than them both, darker than Bayan. We would’ve known whose baby it was, I think, if she had slept with all of us at once and then got pregnant from one of us. We would’ve been able to tell. I wonder if she would have loved Keol’s baby more than mine. And then I shake my head. It doesn’t matter. And it’s not fair. She has nothing left of him, except a ring on her finger and his heart in her chest.

Nua opens his mouth again, as if he’s about to say something else, but he doesn’t get a chance to because Ava and Penny come back then, balancing take-out boxes of breakfast in their hands. Sloan is with them, her arms laden with water bottles, and they pass them all out, sitting down in the dirt next to us. Nua sits up, leaning against the stones around the firepit, and I’m reminded of the fountain at home.

“So,” says Penny after a moment, settling in on the ground at Bayan’s feet. “Baby.”

“Baby,” agrees Nua. Ava grins a little, poking through her blueberries, and Bayan watches her. She notices, looking up at him, and although neither of them say anything I watch something pass between them. She’s always been a picky eater, I’ve noticed, and her sickness made her skinnier than she should’ve been too. Now, being stuck down here with no sunlight isn’t helping either.

But after a moment Ava just pops a blueberry in her mouth, leaning back, and then says, “Are we all awake?”

Sloan looks at her, and says, “Now?”

“Good a time as any,” says Ava, and Penny glances between them. “What’s going on?”

Sloan looks at Ava again, and she just takes a deep breath. “I’ve made a decision,” she says slowly. “And I need you all to listen, and to shut up.”

I look at Bayan, thinking he would know what she’s planning, but to my surprise he looks just as confused as the rest of us do. Penny just mutters, “No one said anything,” and Ava glares at him. Then she looks up at Sloan, and closes her eyes, and says, “I have to go back.”

And the four of us stare at her, me and Nua and Penny and Bayan, and after a moment she opens her eyes. She told us to shut up, but now she’s not talking, and finally Nua says, “Huh?”

“I have to go back,” she says again, softly. “It’s me that she wants, and now that we know about Abigala, I can start to figure it out.”

“Ava,” says Penny, standing, but she just holds up her hands. “It’s not because of anything you said. You were right, but I’ve been thinking about this for a while. We can’t stay here forever.”

“But why do we have to go back?” I ask quietly, and she looks at me, smiling slightly. “You don’t. I do.”

“No, Ava,” says Penny. She just nods. “Yes. Everything works. Now is the time.”

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“Why now?” I ask, and she says, “I know where Abigala is. I can start to figure out where your parents are. And now that Marissa’s not pregnant anymore, I can help her and Nerev take the baby somewhere safe.”

And we stare at her a moment more, and then she sighs, and stands up, and walks to the fire. She holds out her hands, and then turns back to us. “Everything that my mother has done, it’s been because of me. Because I wouldn’t listen to her. And look where it’s gotten us. Penny hasn’t seen the sun in three years. Bayan has been hit and abused until he could get away, and you two, you’re married to me. And Keol and Owen are dead.”

“It’s all because of her,” says Penny quietly, still standing, still staring at her. “Why do you want to go back to her, you can’t go back to her.”

“I don’t want to go back to her,” says Ava. “But I’m the only one that she won’t hurt.”

“But she can’t get to us now,” I say quietly, and Ava looks at me. “She can get to Abigala.”

My stomach drops, and I shake my head. “No.”

“That’s what it’s all for,” says Ava quietly, sitting on the stones around the firepit, in front of me. “She’s using Abigala to get to you to get to me. Cut out the middle man. I go back, you stay safe down here, for as long as you need to. But eventually, I’ll get you back out.”

“Miss Ava,” says Bayan softly. She ignores him, or maybe doesn’t hear. “But I can’t get you out, and safe, and healthy, from down here. I have to go up.”

“Miss Ava,” says Bayan again, and something flashes through his eyes, something I’ve never seen in him before. He looks up at her, and then to Penny, and then shakes his head. “I can’t let you go.”

Ava looks at him for a moment, a slight smile on her lips, but it’s because she understands. And she takes a deep breath, and says, “First of all, Bayan, I appreciate your looking out for me, but I already have to deal with one idiotic boy trying to protect me from our mother, and I don’t need two.”

She pauses, and Bayan looks down at the ground.

“And second of all,” she says after a slightly awkward moment, “there’s no need to keep up with this ‘Miss Ava’ business. I’m not your owner, at least not anymore.”

He looks up at her. Nua says, “Yeah, and on that note, stop calling us master.”

Bayan smiles slightly at the ground, and then looks up at us. I smile a little. He looks at Ava, and then at Penny, and seems to be a little flustered. Finally he says, “If you’re absolutely sure-”

“I am,” she says with finality, and I’m fairly certain they’re not talking about titles anymore.

He nods. Nua stands up too, looking down at her, and says slowly, “Okay.” He watches her rub the spot where a bandage sits under her clothes. Bayan’s eyes follow her hands as well, but he doesn’t say anything else. Nua puts his hands on his head, and says, “What would you do at home?”

“Wait, were you calling me an idiot?” asks Penny.

“I don’t know yet,” says Ava, ignoring her brother, “because I would have to do what she wants. At least at first, at least a little bit. But the plan would still be to talk to you. I can still talk to you, through Sloan, like Bayan used to do without telling me.”

Bayan looks at the ground again, and Penny just puts his hand on his shoulder.

“And,” she continues, looking at me now, “the plan would be, really, the main thing, is to find your parents, Aber.”

I take a deep breath, closing my eyes, and I can feel tears behind them. Finally I say, “How?”

“I don’t know yet,” she says gently. “And I might have to do it in secret. But if I can go back to work, I can talk to people.”

“You told me you couldn’t, you told me you couldn’t when you were looking for Abigala,” I whisper. “You said it was different departments and different, different government things.”

“Yes,” she says softly. “But if I go back to my mother now, she’ll keep me under close watch. And that’ll probably mean that she’ll start training me to do what she does. And part of what she does, it’s budgeting, for the agencies, and I worked in budgeting before, remember?”

“She wants you to do agencies?” I whisper, looking at her, and I can feel my eyes welling with tears, I don’t know why. Ava nods. “That’s what she’s wanted, this whole time, my whole life. That’s what it’s all been for. For me to take over what she does.”

“What if she doesn’t?” asks Nua quietly, sinking back down to sit in his chair. “What if she just locks you in the house and doesn’t let you anywhere near the stupid fence button and you’re stuck, you’re cut off from everything-”

But Ava shakes her head, holding up her hands. “Trust me, Nua. Please.”

“Won’t she ask about us?” asks Penny softly. “Where we are, where you’ve been hiding all this time.”

“If she wants me to stay,” says Ava, “she’ll have to leave the subject alone. Sloan will come with me.”

“You knew about this?” asks Penny, turning on Sloan, and she just nods. “We’ve been planning it with Shan for a little while.”

“How long?” I ask, and she looks at me, and smiles a little. “A few weeks after I got you.”

“Months,” murmurs Penny.

“What if she makes you get married again?” asks Nua, and I look at him. He has an expression on his face that I can’t quite make out, but somehow it’s exactly the same as what’s on Ava’s when I look back at her. She stares at him a moment, and then swallows and shakes her head. “She won’t.”

“You don’t sound convinced.”

“She won’t,” says Ava again. “Listen. I am the one that she wants, and I am also the one that she needs. She had children for a reason. And she got extremely fucking lucky, that on the first try she got a daughter. Unfortunately I came with a twin, but that didn’t seem to stop the entire life trajectory that she set out for me the second she found out she was pregnant. She needs me to run her empire. My whole life she has used Penny and Bayan and Owen and my husbands to try and keep me in line, and now she has Abigala. Because of you.” She points to me. “So I go to her and I tell her to leave you alone, and Abigala alone, and if I have to say it I’ll refuse to marry anyone else. But the main point is that she leaves you alone, at least for now, and in exchange she has me back. But I can still try and figure things out. For us, and for Shan. And maybe we can actually start doing things that make a difference.”

“You don’t need to sacrifice yourself for us to do something,” says Penny quietly, and Ava looks up at him and smiles. “Penny, I’m the only one who can.”

They stare at each other, mirror images, and Ava sighs. “I’m the only one who can. Not just out of us. Out of everyone down here. And god, I wish I weren’t. But all Shan can do is run things, in Tent City. Which is good, and we need them, and they’re doing a great job. And all Sloan and Alicia and everyone else can do is help us, down here, in Tent City. Which is good, and we need them, and they’re doing a great job. But every single person down here, all of you included, deserve to be up there.”

And she points to the ceiling. Nua and I both look up, and then back at her as she continues. “Like normal people. I want you back,” she says quietly, and she’s looking at Penny. “I want you back, and I want you home. And I want your sister safe,” she says, looking at me. “And your parents. And I want Marissa and Nerev in a place where they can raise their baby with grass and sky.”

“Did they ask you to do this?” asks Penny quietly, and Ava shakes her head. “No, Penny. But I knew that I was going to go back as soon as I got here. Eventually. Somehow. And either I go now, or she rips the entire city apart, and when she doesn’t find me, she starts digging.”

“We’re going with you,” says Nua, and Ava just laughs, looking at him, and shakes her head. “No, you’re not.”

“We are,” I whisper, and she looks at me too. “No. You can’t. You stay here, all of you, until I can get you safe. You have to be safe.”

“That could take months,” says Nua. “Years.”

“We managed before,” says Ava.

“Managed,” says Penny. “You don’t want us to manage, you want us to live. And who knows, if you come back, she’ll follow Sloan, she’ll make you tell, they’ll find us anyway, somehow, she’s still looking for me, you know.”

“To give you back to your wife,” says Ava exasperatedly. “That’s why you can’t just show up on her doorstep, Penny Fortin, that’s why you’ve been down here this whole time.”

“Don’t,” says Penny, his jaw clenching, and Ava holds up her hands. “She’ll give you back,” she says, her voice breaking. “You can’t come with me, because she’ll give you back.”

“Then I’ll go,” says Nua quietly, and Ava looks at him, tears in her eyes now. “I have no idea what she’ll do to you.”

“What about me?” I ask, and Ava manages a laugh, wiping her nose. “She drugged all four of us to sleep just to make sure you didn’t find out your sister was working for her, Aber, and now she’s living there-”

“Or maybe,” I say softly, “it was so that my sister wouldn’t find out that I’m married to you.”

Ava looks at me. So does Bayan, and Penny, and Nua, and then Sloan says quietly, “I told you they’d wanna come.”

“I know,” says Ava quietly with a sigh. She leans her head back, and then shakes her head to mess up her hair. “But you all know that I’m right, right?”

Nua and I glance at each other, and Penny and Bayan glance at each other. Ava notices. “You know that I have to go back. To help all of you, and to help Shan, and now, maybe more than anything else, to help that stupid baby.”

I’m the first one to answer. “Yeah.”

And Nua and Penny both look at me, but Bayan just leans back in his chair and sighs. And Penny looks down at him, and then he looks at his sister, and takes a deep breath. “I want to come, Ava.”

Ava looks at him.

“I want to see her,” he says quietly. “After what she did to me, and to Owen, and to Bayan…”

Bayan shakes his head, closing his eyes, but doesn’t say anything, and Penny does not acknowledge it. “I want her to look me in the eyes. I want her to not be able to.”

“I have to see Abigala,” I say quietly, looking up at Ava, and she just sighs. I shake my head. “I do. I do, I, Abigala won’t let her do anything, but I need to know. I need to ask her. Why.”

“Ava, we’re not going to just let you go back on your own,” says Nua softly, and Bayan whispers, “Miss Ava.”

“What did I just say?” says Ava to him, and he smiles a little at the dirt beneath his feet. “I told you,” says Sloan again with a slight grin, and Ava just smiles a little too, holding up her hands. “I made my case. That’s all I wanted.”

And she sighs, and leans her back, and rubs her eyes. She looks around at all of us, and says, “So that’s it, then. It’s decided. We’ll start planning.”

“It’s decided,” says Penny with finality. “We’ll start planning.”

“We’re going back,” says Ava, looking at me and Nua. He reaches over and takes my hand, and I squeeze it. “We’re going back.”