“–right, Mother?”

Mother snapped back to the present. “Hm?”

Mr Clean sighed. “I asked if you’re doing alright. You’ve been quiet tonight.”

She nodded. “I’m fine.”

“If you insist.”

Ever the Hunter, Mr Clean went back to butchering a doe in silence. He was not one to waste time with empty words, which was why Mother had originally contracted him to manage her protective detail. Well, that and the cleanliness of his work. He had used cosmetic enhancements to delay the natural degradation of his skin like so many others, but where most made such rituals weekly, Mr Clean would purify himself twice a day. He had even named himself after an old-world brand of cleaning supplies after noticing a similarity in likeness between himself and their mascot.

Twilight engulfed the Coloradan foothills as the two sat under a starless night. Her outpost still held strong, at least. Built from the ground up inside a plateau on Cheyenne’s western ridge, a set of palisade walls surrounded the camouflage tents where Mother and her companions could base themselves without ever raising a high profile. The location was hidden from all directions but up, they had vision for as far as eyes could see, and radio signals carried farthest here. It was also isolated. Not even hollows wandered near.

“How goes the search?” Mother asked.

Mr Clean gave his bald head a rub. “We’ve got a few new prospects. Give us a couple hours to have them ready for inspection.”

“Remember, we cannot afford errors.”

“You really think a body swap will fool Hades? Even with the best creams, you can only make hollows look so fresh.”

Mother shrugged. “Whether Hades thinks that Liam has hollowed or not is less relevant than what his Hunters believe. If enough become convinced that this contract is a waste of their time, his forces will dwindle and he will lack the manpower to push much further. We’ll make the swap once Leah arrives.”

Mr Clean raised an eyebrow. “Once? Or if?”

Mother grimaced. It had been almost a month now since she had fled Pandemonium and tasked Leah with the impossible. Hades would never allow a living human to disappear on his watch. Not without a fight. He would go to the ends of the Earth and burn everything along the way to see his vision reached, if for no reason other than to prove Mother wrong. Only Leah stood a chance against him, but she and her party had been missing for weeks.

Doubt became an inevitability after so much silence. Had they been killed along the way? It seemed unlikely, given what her scout had witnessed at Reno. Leah had managed to get the car from Vaughn, and was last reported escaping east as planned. They should have been stocked with enough biofuel to have reached Cheyenne in days, broken bridges or not. Mother had made the trip hundreds of times herself. It should not have taken this long.

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Mother began to consider the chemistry of the company that she had hastily thrown together. Her mental image of Liam Fenix was incomplete, but she had seen enough from him to know that he was entirely driven by the hope of seeing his family again. He would not deviate without cause. Mastermind and Kurt were both proficient Hunters handpicked by Leah, and they were acquiescent enough to persevere in the face of hardship.

But that still left Leah herself. Mother knew everything about her. About the rezzer that had been born into a world filled with chaos, trying to find her own place as those around her perished, one after another. She knew how far Leah would go in pursuit of seeing the Hollowing end. Her struggles had been the most trying of them all. But her greatest strength was also Mother’s Achilles heel. Leah would fight for Liam until the bitter end… Or until the moment her own safety was put into jeopardy, and not a second after.

Mother considered the possibility. Was that what had happened? Had Leah merely surrendered the potential of a future for her own solipsistic present? Were rezzers so fundamentally incapable of growth?

No. That can’t be. Mother had to trust in her own intelligence. She had to believe that the information she had leveraged was sound, and that both Liam and Leah were still sufficiently motivated. She had to trust that, at the very least, they would have cleared Aspen by now. Any alternative was unacceptable.

“What is the cost of failure, Mr Clean?” Mother asked, more for her own benefit than his.

He paused from his work. “What do you mean?”

“If Leah does not arrive, and this mission is a failure, then what do you believe will happen next?”

“Back to Pandemonium, I guess, patching the holes as they form.”

“You are half correct,” Mother explained, peering into darkness. “Listen carefully for the full answer.”

“There’s nothing out there.”

“Indulge me.”

Mr Clean stared into that same open, empty night. “What am I supposed to hear?”

“Silence. When we first arrived, this environment was replete with sounds. Birds, bears, coyotes, wolves. All manner of fauna could be heard from this very spot. And now? Nothing. We are six fully nourished rezzers, camped out for little more than a month, and already we have destroyed the local environment. Our mere presence is like salt in the earth.

“Regardless of how long we may keep ourselves stable, the end result will be the same. Our reservoirs will all one day drain, and our sentience will be no more. That is the consequence of a race with no progeny. When we are gone, there will be nothing left in this world but that empty noise you hear now. No rezzers. No philosophic debate on a warm night. No future. Only silence.”

She met him in the eyes. “That is what will happen if Leah does not arrive, so let us hope that her return is still a matter of when.”

Mr Clean matched her gaze. “And when she does? You can only keep the truth hidden from them for so long. What will you do once it comes out?”

Mother steepled her hands. “Whatever is necessary, just as I have always done.”

The radio suddenly went off. Three quick pings of static in rapid succession. Mother’s veins tightened as her dead heart erupted with a phantom beat. Mr Clean tossed his knife aside and went for his assault rifle, and she considered doing the same. Both knew the code that had just been sent.

Someone was coming.