Lori let out horrible, heartbroken sobs for what seemed like an eternity. Seeing what happened in Vancouver and Seattle certainly got my own waterworks going, but I hadn’t just watched someone I care about die on national television. It was obvious Rory meant a lot to her. Yes, I lost my parents and that was something that would always stick with me. I didn’t have to watch them get painfully murdered with the rest of the world. Rory went into a situation where he knew he’d likely lose his life, and that had to weigh on Lori’s mind heavily.
In a poor attempt to comfort the hurting girl, I put my hand on her back. My apprehension to being touched making it an awkward gesture. She didn’t seem to be in the mood for conversation, so I thought maybe a physical sign that she wasn’t alone might be able to help. My sister would often make small amounts of contact with me right after our parents died, and it did help me a little bit.
She looked at me with surprise in her tear-filled eyes, but she didn’t shrug away from the contact. I thought she might’ve tried giving me a weak smile before covering her face again. It was hard for me to tell. She was hurting so much that I wanted to try giving the small girl a hug. I decided against doing that since we’d only known each other for a day. Still, I did consider her a friend, and I wanted to do what I could while keeping our boundaries respected.
I glanced over at Mrs. Carmichael, who had found her way into one of our chairs. She was resting her forehead against her folded hands. She wasn’t crying, though she was absolutely upset about the loss. I wasn’t going to pretend to know the woman after a single lunch together. She had to have a million different things going through her head at one moment. She seemed to want to have every situation under control, and while this wasn’t the best start to our specific one, I had no doubt that she would be hard at work trying to get the ball rolling.
Suddenly, she lifted her head and gave me a hard stare. “Ethan, it pains me to demand this of you, but I will need your decision today. I was hoping I’d be able to ease you into everything more than this. With the continued attacks, my time will be needed back at Luna. We don’t have the infrastructure setup to start proper training, but I will not tolerate anyone else dying like Rory did today. Will you join us, Ethan?”
Honestly, I think I had already made up my mind well before she asked me that question. McLeod and his goons—Dii Consentes, or whatever they wanted to be called—scared me to death. The way they treated human life as if it was nothing horrified me to my core. They only played by their own sick, twisted rules, and no one had been able to stop them yet. Hell, he was confident enough to announce an attack to see if normal humans could do anything to him.
He seemed so strong that it made sense to take him up on his offer and join him. But then I would remember all those families tragically torn apart, and I knew I couldn’t side with them. Not after what I’d gone through with my own parents.
“I’ll go with you,” I said. My voice betrayed how unconfident I felt. “If I try to hide and run from them, what will happen? Will they try to take me by force? Even if I were to develop my Anomaly alone, I don’t think I could protect myself and my sister for very long. Going with you and Lori gives my family the best chance to live, I think. I can’t take what they’ve done to all those innocent people either.”
“You’re going with them, Ethan? Even if it means putting a target on your back?” Shelly asked. Her voice didn’t waver. She looked like she also knew this decision was coming.
“I think it’s the best decision. People are dying, Shelly. Maybe I can’t stop that, but I can at least try to keep us safe.”
Shelly sighed and shook her head. “I know they are. I just don’t want you to be one of them. You know I’m going with you, right?”
I nodded, never even considering the possibility she would have stayed behind. “Of course, but what are you going to do about work?”
“Shane was trying to get me to work from home anyway. He wanted me to spend more time with you before you went off to college, something he didn’t get a chance to do with his own kids. I can still schedule meetings and the like for him with a computer and a headset, so that won’t be an issue.”
The confirmation that we’d both join Luna seemed to make Mrs. Carmichael a bit happier. Lori, still crying, looked up to both of us and nodded. With the decision made, Mrs. Carmichael sent out some text messages before making sure each person in the room had shared their phone numbers with everyone else. We all sent a few test text messages and phone calls to make sure we didn’t have any issues getting in touch with each other.
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“One week should be adequate for you to pack your belongings,” Mrs. Carmichael said with some regained confidence. “Any and all furniture that you need will be given to you, but you won’t have to wait for it. You’ll be moving into a fully furnished unit at our complex. Ms. Davis, you will stay here for the remaining week to make sure nothing happens to them.”
“Are you kidding me?” Lori yelled, getting angry. “Rory just died without me getting a chance to say goodbye, and I can’t even go home to grieve? He was the only one who really made me feel at home there!”
“Yes, because this was an assignment you were given, and it is valuable and needed experience for you,” Mrs. Carmichael replied, not giving up an inch. “We will all have time to grieve for Rory, but he did not sacrifice himself so we could sit around and feel depressed about it. He died saving innocent lives and proving they’re not invincible. This may still be a confusing and difficult situation for Ethan, so you need to see through the assignment you were given.”
Mrs. Carmichael tapped her phone once and Fink appeared, not looking much better than Lori. They both gave small waves and teleported out of the room, leaving Shelly, Lori, and myself in a very tense atmosphere. Angry and sad with grief are not a helpful blend of emotions. Trust me, I knew that one from experience.
“Hey,” I began, reaching out to small woman on the couch. “I’m here if there’s something you need. We both are, right Shelly?”
My sister nodded her head, but Lori shook hers. “Thanks guys, but I just want to be alone for the rest of the day. You know where I live if you need anything.”
She stood up and didn’t waste any time exiting our apartment, wiping her eyes and sniffling as she left. In our apartment’s silence, I could hear her close her door. The poor girl had to feel so damn alone.
“Do you think she’ll be okay?” I wondered aloud, grabbing the broom to clean up the shattered bits of TV.
“In time, probably,” Shelly replied as she got ready to help with the cleanup. “It was especially hard on you for the first month when Mom and Dad died. You would hardly do anything.”
I tried to think back to how I got out of that period of my life. All of it was sort of a blur, like my brain didn’t want to revisit any of those memories. I did remember many meals left out that I didn’t eat. It wasn’t because I didn’t feel hungry or didn’t like it. I just couldn’t muster the energy to eat any food. It took every bit of effort I had to shower, and I only did that because I knew it would be rude to Shelly to live together and not bathe. Looking back on it, not eating her food was also rude, but fourteen-year-old me didn’t think that far.
“Sorry about the TV, by the way. I don’t know how I did it, and I’m kind of too scared to try it again. If I can’t control it, I’d hate to create a new door for us to Lori’s apartment.” If it was possible to sweep guiltily, I was doing it.
“Eh, it was a cheap thing anyway. You realizing your Anomaly thing is probably worth an old secondhand TV. What do you think it is?” Shelly grabbed a second broom she kept in her closet to join me in sweeping.
I shrugged and frowned. Anyone’s guess would have been as good as mine. “I just kept wishing that what I was seeing and hearing would stop, and bam, no more television. It was focused on a point, judging from the wall, but I’m not really sure what it might be.”
“I’ll see if I can put some easily breakable objects in a metal container and maybe you can practice a bit.” She stopped before adding, “Carefully practice, I mean.”
After that, we cleaned up quietly, and let me tell you, there’s not a lot of fun in cleaning up glass and small bits of plastic from a carpet with brooms. Even though I swept and vacuumed the area what felt like hundreds of times, I knew that I’d be paranoid about stepping on a shard for the last week I’d be in that apartment.
The last week in the only town that I’d known as home for all my life.
That thought hit me harder than it had when I initially agreed to go with Lori and Mrs. Carmichael. My family had only left home to go on a few trips for vacation, and that wasn’t often. I didn’t really know about many other parts of the country, either. I knew the east and west coasts had a huge amount of people. I knew they had beaches. That was about it. I was kicking myself for not paying more attention when we did learn about cities on the coasts.
There were a few questions I wished I had asked Mrs. Carmichael when she was in the apartment with us. I accepted there would be time in my future to ask them. Getting to a place where I could learn how to best use my Anomaly was my current goal. McLeod was attacking closer to home, even if Seattle wasn’t that far away from Vancouver. What if Portland wasn’t too far off? What about the smaller cities behind it, like Salem, Eugene, or Gresham? What if he just marched along the west coast and attacked every city that had more than one hundred thousand people living in them? When would it stop?
No, learning and developing was the best plan I could stick to. If I couldn’t control whatever I did to that TV, it could be a student at school, someone in a store, or Shelly next time. A TV, table, or wall were all things that could be replaced easily enough. I wasn’t sure I could live with myself if I hurt someone because of my lack of control. I’d make sure to get better and ensure the survival of my family. The first step to that was cleaning up the mess I made.