The stiffness in my chest coiled tighter. “Why would we need a …” I began. But the realization descended on me like an avalanche, snuffing out my sentence.

The radiation.

Mom stepped toward me with a mask of grim resolve. “What’s done is done.”

A mournful guitar riff bled into the storeroom as Laramee slunk out, glass crunching, and eased the door shut.

My breath came in short bursts, my legs unsteady. “It’s my fault. It’s all my fault.” Oh my God, what had I done? My own mother …

“You made a choice,” she said, each word sharpened to a point. “And choices have consequences.”

The room blurred, the light fixture a soggy twinkle. Why was she being like this? “I didn’t mean to—”

“Listen to me, Ko.” She hung back, her arms tucked behind her. “Laramee will take you somewhere safe tonight. Tomorrow, we’ll figure out what’s next.”

I couldn’t begin to process this. What could possibly be next? “Where will you be?”

“If I’m vomiting already, the radiation dose was higher than I feared. I’ll get the best care at the hospital.”

I cast about the room as if the cure lurked somewhere between the booze and wood paneling. “Mom, I—” My voice cracked in two.

She softened all at once and extended her arms. “Come here.”

I fell into the refuge of her embrace, her lips warm on my brow.

“I could’ve killed you,” I said.

Laramee returned, setting down a briefcase. “What makes you think you haven’t?”

A chill stabbed through me, slicing to the bone. I stared at him, agape.

Mom assessed me with a severe look, smoothing my hair. “There’s no use pretending. You need to be prepared. But first, you need rest. We both do.”

How could I rest now? How could I do anything but try to fix this?

Laramee held the door open, exchanging a long look with Mom, the clink of glassware filling the silence.

Finally she broke his gaze, her arms tightening around me. But then her embrace pulled away—and all the warmth in the world left with her. “It’s time for you to go, Eniko.”

I dragged in a shuddering breath, tears carving down my cheeks. She hadn’t called me that since I was little. “I’m coming to the hospital with you.”

“Not while the bearded bot is out there. And law enforcement will be looking into the bridge explosion.” Her eyes were glassy. “You have to promise me you’ll keep yourself safe.”

My chin quivered. “I promise.”

“Then go.” She turned her back to me, her shoulders wracked by silent sobs.

“Mom! I can’t do this by myself!”

Laramee draped a long hand on my shoulder. “It’s time to go.”

I shrugged him off, my hand flexing. What, did he want another knee to the balls?

But he wrapped his fingers around my bicep, his jaw set, and pulled me into the pub's main room, flinging the door shut behind us.

I writhed under his grip and let out a throaty cry at the injustice of it all.

Everyone was staring at me over their pints, the gorilla of a bartender stopping mid-pour.

Sobbing, I tried the handle. Locked. I banged the door, scratching the paint. “Mom, please …” I couldn’t leave her like this—or do this without her.

“We need to go,” Laramee said softly.

I turned, sliding down the door with my palms to my head—one metal and one flesh. It was like pieces of me were falling away, leaving behind an empty shell. Jesus, I’d nuked my own mother. The woman who’d raised me, kept me safe all these years. I’d paid enough attention in AP Bio to know she had to be real sick. That we didn’t have much time.

Laramee hefted me to my feet and led me through a haze of murmurs. Outside, harsh light sliced through a canopy of cooing mourning doves. He opened the passenger door of the LYPD sedan at the curb, scanning the boulevard.

If Mom was in the hospital and I was holed up to lick my wounds, that meant trusting Laramee to keep her safe, right? I slid into the car, staring at the mounted keyboard and display. The door slammed shut, jolting me out of my head.

Laramee rounded the hood and eased in with a sigh, pulling the car into traffic.

If Mom didn’t make it … A swell of heartache pulled me back under. This whole time, everything I’d done, I was only looking for this stupid Talisman, trying to keep me and Mom safe. But look where it’d gotten us. Mom, deathly sick. Matt, gone. Garrett, unreachable. Me, less than human. And Athleisure, probably hunting us right now with his messed-up brain cloned from some psychopath in Otokotronics’ Executive Guard.

“I’ll have someone bring over your bags.” Laramee shifted, the planes of his face fixed. “But that was a pretty dumb move back there—telling your own mother she’s not your mother.”

Tendrils of guilt enveloped me. It wasn’t my proudest moment.

Laramee’s eyes were hard, almost aglow in the sunlight. “You can’t keep pushing away the people trying to help you.”

Who the hell was he to judge me? “If I wanted your advice, I’d have kneed it out of you.”

His jaw stiffened. “You know, I have a kid too. A girl. I know what it’s like, being willing to do anything to protect someone. You could cut your mother a little slack.”

My breath caught. Something about his tone. “What … Where’s your daughter now?”

Laramee cornered at a patchwork of soccer fields, too fast. “In the other world.”

“Is this the part where you say I remind you of her, give me some fatherly nuggets of wisdom?”

He thrust his head back. “God, no. She’s nothing like you. Sweet, tender. Content to play with her toy tube tram for hours.” His eyes sparkled before his frown crept back. “I guess you do have one thing in common. She’d cry and moan when we wouldn’t let her do something herself.”

“Isn’t that just how little kids are?”

He shot me a heavy-lidded look. “Exactly.”

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Now Laramee was sassing me?

He slowed the car at a broad intersection as the light went red—and casually eased through anyway. “You’re still figuring out your place in the world.”

He was wrong. When something needed doing, I just got it done. It was everyone else who moaned. Still, his kid being on the other side sounded rough. “You think you’ll see them again? Your family?” My fingers went to my wrist for Dad’s watch, only to find my bomb-proof Casio.

Heartache flickered in his eyes. “I’m going to find my way back to them.” He twirled his wedding ring around his finger, the flicker turning to flames. “Even if it breaks me.”

My chest ached on Laramee’s behalf. But it’d been, what, almost fifteen years? “What about your life here?”

He drew himself upright. “There’s not much to miss. Maybe taking out my boat, when it’s just me and the rigging and the water…. Can’t really do that on the other side. But I’m a better person with my family. In the war, I …” He massaged the steering wheel, a shadow falling over his face. “We did what we were told—protect those portals at all costs. Whole cities silenced, beaches turned to glass. And for what? To make rich men richer? No, I can’t lose my way again. I’ve seen what happens.”

This other world sounded kind of terrible, and Laramee was clearly dealing with some demons. But there was no way he could waltz back through a portal. “So you’re just gonna show up after you destroyed their lab and expect Otokotronics to leave you alone?”

“They said they have a position waiting for me.” He registered my dismay. “I’m not taking it. I was under their thumb long enough—and shouldn’t have to choose between freedom and my family.”

“What if they won’t take no for an answer? Sometimes you have to choose.”

His eyes flashed. “Oh? And what would you choose if you were in my shoes?”

My vision flickered, and the arm attached to my robo fingers tingled as if dancing with electrical current. Was this the radiation hitting me now too? Mom had to be so scared and alone. I pictured her in a hospital bed, all sorts of tubes coming out. “Your family, duh. What good is your independence without them?”

Laramee grunted, hunching over the wheel.

He sure had some stuff to work through before he got back to the other world. Right now though, I had Mom to worry about in this one. The person who’d always been there for me, especially now with Matt gone. She’d only wanted to protect me, and it wasn’t just to control me or because I was a kid. She’d put me, put us, above everything. To keep us together, to keep us safe in a terrible situation, even if it meant lying to my face. And all it took for me to recognize this—for me to forgive her—was Mom almost dying by my hand.

My eyes stung for the millionth time that day. “I need you to keep my mom safe at the hospital. What’re you doing about the bearded bot even LYPD can’t catch?”

Laramee licked his split lip, twisting a dial on a darkened radio between us. “He gave Stanton’s bot the slip on the bridge. Things were a little … chaotic. As you may recall.”

More sass I didn’t need. “Athleisure vanished on Stanton’s watch—twice. Pretty convenient, wouldn’t you say?”

“Stanton is a good man. Better than most. He just wants to keep his boys safe, give them the security he didn’t have as a kid. We’re all doing the best we can.”

“Are you doing your best to look into Beard Bot murdering the girl last week?”

Laramee gave me one of his dour looks. “Where’d you hear that?”

“FBI lady showed me the security footage. I don’t think he found what he was looking for though. She must’ve lost the Talisman before he got her—or never had it to begin with.”

“We’re looking into it.”

“Why should I believe you?”

He swung the car through a turn. “Is that what this is about? You don’t trust me?”

“Did my dad?”

“He used to. Even let me babysit a couple times.”

I jerked back. What the hell? Laramee babysat me? “So what happened?”

He looked stricken. “You’ve had a rough day. Maybe now is not the best—”

“I’m so goddamned sick of secrets. That’s how we got into this mess.”

“I don’t think—”

“You’re right. I’ve been through a whole fucking lot today.” I felt hollow, emptied of emotions. “I need to know I can rely on you. The least you can do is tell me about my dad. Why did he stop trusting you?”

He settled into a long stare. “I kind of slept with his wife.”

My face grew hot. “Oh.” Mom and Laramee had a thing? I gave him dagger eyes on my dad’s behalf.

“It was one time, and we both regretted it. The stress of planning the Talisman theft under Otokotronics’ nose, the risk of capture. It was too much….”

Something didn’t add up here. “But then why did my dad sacrifice himself by closing the portal behind you and my mom?”

Laramee tweaked the lifeless radio again. “He didn’t. It’s a fiction your mother created based on the facts she had.”

“So what really happened? … Laramee. You said you wanted redemption, right? Well here’s your chance.”

He gave me a resentful look, like I’d just pressed the right button and we both knew it. “I never told her the truth and you’re not going to either. It would destroy her. Promise me.”

Did I really want to hear this? I gulped, nodding.

We crept to an intersection beside a car wash oozing suds. This time, Laramee didn’t run the light. He leaned back, his gaze unfocused. “You and Janice transited with the first wave while your father stayed behind to steal the Talisman and I destroyed the lab. It was the middle of the night, all like clockwork. I’m finishing up, flashlight in my teeth, about to drop a lit sparkflare. And your father comes creeping into the lab, cold and calm, just waiting for me to say something.”

Frost crawled through my limbs, just hearing about this mythical figure I’d fixated on for so long. Laramee wouldn’t make this up, right?

He continued. “I tell him we’ll sort it out on the other side. But he claims he hid the Talisman from everyone. Says he won’t go, that Janice and I deserve each other. That he’d given me gifts and I’d thrown them in his face. I tell him to come anyway, that he’ll be killed if he stays, and that’s if he’s lucky. You know what he says?”

“What?” I breathed.

Laramee raised his voice over the clamor of sirens outside. “He says he’s going to destroy the portal after I transit, make sure we can’t come back. To be rid of us. To punish us.” He slid his hands around the wheel, his throat bobbing. “Thing is, after what Janice and I did, I don’t really blame him.”

Jesus. Here I was, thinking my sweet dad had sacrificed himself to save me and Mom. Gave me his prized watch, maybe pined for us from another world. But no, he was just a vengeful asshole, willing to banish his own family for a little payback.

Laramee stepped on the gas. An armada of emergency vehicles going the other way whipped past us with syncopated sirens blaring, their lights pulsing against the angles of his profile.

Heading to the bridge, no doubt—to clean up my mess. My chewed-up arm tingled painfully as if lightning flowed through my veins, the edges of my vision dancing with color. I imagined the radiation working its way through my flesh, my brain, my whole body. Maybe I deserved it.

“So, yeah, your father used to trust me,” Laramee said. “Until he didn’t.”

“You telling me this so I feel sorry for you?”

He scoffed. “I’m telling you this because you guilted me into it.”

“What do you think he did with the Talisman?”

“If I knew, this would all be over.”

My chest twinged. “Except for the radiation. The Talisman won’t magically fix that.”

Laramee’s forehead was lined. “Except for that.”

I needed him to protect Mom. “I spilled the beans to my mom about my detective work. Your leverage is gone. I could tell her about your off-books lab project too.”

Laramee side-eyed me. “I hope you keep your mouth shut anyway. Your mother doesn’t need anything else to worry about now. I only want to get back to my family. Make up for lost time, for my own missteps. Without them, I don’t know what becomes of me here.”

We rode the rest of the way in grim silence, finally cutting into a neighborhood with roughcast apartments before parking outside a shaded bungalow with more pine needles than roof.

I slid from the car, my tooth rocking under my tongue.

Laramee strode ahead and pulled back a creaking storm door to let us into the safe house. A high ceiling sloped over a living room and kitchen barely this side of the 80s, greenery shading the windows. This place felt far away from the overwhelming events of today.

“Here,” he said, handing me a chunky phone. “The first number goes to whomever is on duty outside. The second, to me. Day or night, okay?”

I pocketed the phone. “What about my mom?”

“I’ll work on getting a line to her. She won’t have her cell. For her safety. I’ll be out front here until we set up a rotation, probably Stanton next once we repair his bot. He only really goes out in person the days he’s at the station. PTSD from the war. But someone will be by soon to check you out, drop off your things. You were further from the blast, but we’ll still want to get some iodine in you.” He turned to go, wavering on the porch.

An unwelcome swell of gratitude took me by surprise. “Thank you.”

He met my gaze, his jaw stiff. “You know, she’d be about your age now.”

I stood in the entryway, not knowing what to say. He wavered on the threshold and let the moment stretch till almost bursting.

And then he was gone, the door hinging shut behind him.