“Your dad thinks I abducted you. He’s sending some guys to get you back.”

Heavy, static-filled sigh from Sean. There really was nothing physical in that circle. When a person speaks, you can get an idea about which way they face, even if you can’t see them speaking. Sean’s voice simply emitted from the empty air.

“Sean? You’re not a prisoner. Do you want to go back to him?”

“I really don’t.” His voice was the same as I remembered. More electric and buzzy, and less hostile and showboaty. “I’m starting to remember.”

“Okay, this isn’t a problem. We’ll work it out. Radio, please let Mandy and Schmendrick listen in if they like.”

We didn’t speak for a while. I’d left him in the dark. I wasn’t proud of that. I don’t know what he was thinking, but he did more of that unsettling electrical sobbing: sss-sss-sss.

I looked at him with my Steward’s eye, checking for bonus content. A soul, forming in that circle. A pulsing blob of sadness, not hovering in the air but plopped on the floor like a scoop of melting ice cream. Where other souls I’d seen had been seething balls of energy, this one was a foggy, wretched mess. As I watched, it was solidifying, becoming denser.

I interrupted his misery. “Are you in any pain? Can I get you anything that will help?”

“Why? Why would you?” His voice was a dull growl.

“Why not?”

“I forced you into that cage. And you know what? I forced you to leave me there. I wouldn’t have let you go up those stairs. I’d have beaten you up, tried to push you off the stairs, you know? Off the cliff. The dark goes down so far. I remember trying to find the bottom, once I’d…become this. I couldn’t find it, just bones. Bones, then more dark, going down and down.”

“Did you…are you dead?”

“I don’t know. You said Mandy’s here.”

Mandy like the song. They’d sung that song at her as they…as she…

The big dive. I found myself staring into that circle, the one holding Sean. Sean, who had left me in a cage in the dark to starve. But that wasn’t a big deal, was it? No. Not at all.

But Mandy. That was…

That was a Big Deal. I was on my feet, fists at my sides. It was the Biggest of Deals, the tastiest sample in Costco, the sweetest ride on the lot.

“Owen?” His voice was tentative. Lost. Just a big dumb kid, really. Afraid of his monstrous father. All of them had been.

I was shaking. Deep breaths. I had this person in my power, which was a strange, unheard-of sensation. I wanted to look back on this, years from now, and know I’d done the right thing. It wasn’t entirely my call to make. “Do you want to talk to her?”

“Oh god, no, not her. After what we did…”

Was that sincere? Did it matter? If I wanted, I could ask the hunt to come in here and destroy whatever Sean had become. I thought for a while. I looked at my hands. They’d stopped shaking.

Okay. Back in charge of myself. “Do you want out of that circle?”

“No!” His voice snapped with an electric pop. “No. This is keeping me together. I can finally think. Please…I need to think, please let me be.”

“I won’t let your dad get you.” I don’t know why I said it, but I meant it. Harrigan wouldn’t get his mitts on this…person, not again.

“After all I did. I…”

“It’s cool.”

“It’s really not. It’s not.”

No, it wasn’t, but we could work on it. I left him there, sobbing to himself. Sss-sss-sss.

Mandy was facing the window in Schmendrick’s nest room. She had that rigid combat stance I remembered. “I gotta go,” she said.

“Everything okay?” I asked, because it’s what you do, but I could see that everything was not okay.

“Trouble, something new, a biggie. On the way here. I…let’s go to the beach, please.”

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

We left Schmendrick snoring in her nest. We passed Gary and Art Deco, building something with the wooden dowels and linen. Wings? A kite, maybe? I didn’t interrupt them. Their conversation was entirely nonverbal; just two nerds slapping stuff together, making something cool. It was good to see.

“Those kinds of people don’t like each other, usually,” Mandy said. “I think there was a war, but I don’t know.”

“How about the Hunters? Or these Bees, do you know anything about them?”

“Nope.” Her serious demeanor flipped into that wide grin again. So cute. “I think it’s just…” She frowned. We were on the beach; she set foot into the water, her feet nearly covered by it. “I like it here,” she said.

“Me too. Everyone here is cool.”

“What are you going to do with Sean?”

“I…don’t like what he did to you. I feel like it would be okay for me to…For me and the guys to…I don’t know.”

“It would have happened anyway,” she said. “And has happened many times, I’ll bet. Please don’t … whatever, on my account.”

I sighed. It felt like the right thing. If I asked the Hunt to destroy Sean, I was sure they could do it. Mandy didn’t need that on her conscience. I thought of Mandy, falling. Not superpowered Mandy, like this girl. Just a regular person. I inhaled, deeply. Sighed through my nose. I knew my eyes were big, I was angry, and probably looked pretty crazy. “I’ll just keep him there and tell him he sucks. For now.”

“He does suck, that’s a real issue.” She looked up at me. Kapow, went that sweet round face right into my 2-volt brain. Readers, you weren’t there. Take my word for it: Kapow.

“I have a favor to ask,” Her voice was tentative, but she already had that smug look. She knew she’d get it. “When there’s a real earthshaker fight like this one coming up…” She pointed at a distant thunderhead on the horizon, a miles-tall pile of white cloud. “A big one? People need help. People lose everything. They need someplace to go, someone to help them. I’ve been doing my best, but I don’t have an island with a farm piled on it, you know? With a shelter and a built-in population of …” She waved her arm at the Observatory dome.

“Helpful weirdos?”

“Yeah, exactly. But they’re all weirdos on the same frequency. It works.”

Helplessly, I got that big dumb smile on my big dumb face. “Thank you,” I said through it.

“I know it’s a lot to ask, but I might need a safe place to put some people. What do you say?” She raised those big brown eyes, meeting mine, looking hopeful, lovely, badass. I took in a deep breath. Not a gasp, but it was probably close to that. Good grief, readers. Holy cow. Holy mackerel!

“Bring whoever you like. We’ll work it out.” Okay, my voice was pretty good. No shaking, pretty steady.

There it was again: the smug Mandy grin. She’d won an argument with someone. Herself? Not me, that’s for damn sure, I couldn’t argue with this girl if I’d wanted to.

“Okay,” she said. “Okay, great.” She took a few steps into the water, facing the distant thunderhead.

“Thanks for coming over,” I said, then realized that sounded stupid, or unsuited. Social norms weren’t really built for our current situation, I suppose. Thank you for visiting my mad-science alien farm, you ocean goddess you.

She spun in place and faced me like a gunslinger. Her face was grim, serious. “This was the most fun I’ve had in forever,” she said in a rush.

“Me too,” I said. I realized something horrible: I’d been showing off for Mandy all day, and I hadn’t realized it. Idiot. Idiot.

“And I can bring some folks? They won’t be human folks, okay?” She was stiff, unmoving. Braced.

“Better and better.”

She flat-out scowled. “And if I don’t have anybody and I just want to come over, is that cool?”

“You tried to get me out of there,” I said. “You tried to save me, in the cage. You come over whenever you want. Bring whoever you want.”

“Oh,” she said, like she’d forgotten the cage. She probably had. Just another day.

She stepped back, folded her arms, inspected me. “Tall,” she muttered. “Nice,” she added. Then she looked at the Observatory over my shoulder. “Fun,” she grumped. She met my eyes. “Owen, I think–”

The Radio interrupted. “The invasion force is ahead of schedule. She is arriving now.”

She?

We scanned the horizon. There, framed against that huge thunderhead. It was a single little boat, all right. With one person in it. I could see the tag: Cassie Nilsson.

Cassie, from Harrigan’s camp. Special friend of Armand. The two of them had died that night, burned in green flame, trying to escape with me. A new version of Cassie. She wore the tan cargo shorts rolled to show more belly, and the white shirt was knotted under her modest bosom. She peered anxiously at the shore.

“My god, she’s even wearing makeup,” Mandy said mournfully.

“She is? How can you tell?”

She rolled her eyes and set foot in the water. “You’re so dumb it’s almost hot.”

“Almost? I’m so much dumber than you think–”

Mandy made an irritated noise: “Uugh!” and vanished. No splash, no column of water. Just gone. It felt like a slammed door.

Seconds later, the distant thunderhead emitted a boom, and something I couldn’t see cleaved it vertically in half. The cut started from the ocean, from that distant horizon, and jolted straight up with a precise, razorblade cut. The two parts of the cloud began drifting in slightly different directions.

I scooped up the dress from the water and hung it to dry outside the Mandy Tent.

The two clouds had writhing severed tubes, ruptured sacs. Organs. That was no cloud. The two halves were separating, and the squirming innards of the thing reached for their opposite halves. Trying not to die.

It was a lot to take in. I watched for a while as the cloud-thing was sliced, julienned, annihilated.

The Radio alerted me that the Undine had defeated the Inoculant Vizier Colony. It also reminded me that the Invasion Force was about to land.