jedibuttercup

<< Parts 3 & 4

5. Mastering Perplexity

"They are makers of enemies [ ...], they are inciters to wrongs and violence, they are masters of hidden intentions as well, they are black and white, masters of stupidity, masters of perplexity."
— Popul Vuh, Part Three

"Their story's about what you'd expect," John's voice carried, dry and acerbic, over the Volm communication device. "Espheni hit 'em hard en route — probably tracking 'em by the engines in their Humvees, since they don't seem to have ever figured the insulation trick — and only about a third of 'em got away. Hathaway and most of their senior officers were among the casualties. Thing is, the fishheads weren't aiming to kill; Lieutenant Shoots-First said the mechfire was mostly set to stun, and some fucked up new Skittery things with wings kept grabbing people off the ground. Hathaway's last order before the lead started flying was for any survivors to make their way to Charleston, hoping, I guess, that they'd have better luck with us than trying to push on for Norfolk Naval Base. They'd had the same idea your boy did, there."

"Damn." Tom rubbed a hand over his face, shaking his head. "I'd hoped we'd been able to warn them in time."

The second comm call of the morning had reached him out at the Liberty Tree; he hadn't expected one from John so soon after his report on the state of things in Charlotte, and had answered it thinking it would be Cochise. Much to John's amusement. There'd been very little levity in the rest of the conversation, though. Tom had withdrawn to one of the empty buildings off the square — the house whose porch they'd memorably occupied a few days before, as it happened — to take the details.

Good thing, too. Nearly three years after his administration had fled the invasion and set up in a postage-stamp-sized town in West Virginia, Hathaway didn't mean much to the average citizen of Charleston on a day to day basis. They hadn't even known he was alive until a few months ago. But now that they did know, losing the connection he represented to the halcyon days of Before would be a significant blow to morale.

"So Lieutenant Fisher's in charge of the survivors?" he continued, trying to figure how this new wrinkle would affect the balance in the city. The thirtyish officer was the hard-believing type; she'd shot Crazy Lee the day her group first scouted Charleston because she'd been convinced that the city was filled with Espheni collaborators, but she'd also been a staunch defender from the moment she'd seen the Volm demonstrate that not all aliens were the same ... and that the force multiplier Volm technology represented might actually give them a chance at winning the war. He could work with her.

"Nah, they managed to hang onto one of their Captains as well — another blonde, name of Marshall — and there's a few other lieutenants in the bunch. She's just the one that knows us, so they're using her as a spokesperson."

"Anything you can tell me about Captain Marshall, then, before they arrive?" Tom winced.

John snorted. "I wouldn't be the one to ask about that — you ever hear any of Weaver's stories about his time in the Sandbox?"

Was he suggesting Dan knew her? Tom cast his thoughts back, but couldn't come up with anything that fit; before the attack on the structure in Boston he and Dan had been at odds as often as not, and after Tom's return from captivity they'd always had something else urgent to talk about. "Can't say I have, no; why, have you?"

"Yeah, some of those long nights all those months you were gone, the first time. Guess he had other things to bond with you about. But a few of his tales had a Lieutenant Katie Marshall in 'em. Old flame, from what I gathered — or devoted acolyte, at the very least. He ought to be able to give you a better picture of her character than I could. Though just between you and me, she's kind of a hardass. Fought me about getting their vehicles off the road long enough to strip a building for that Pink Panther shit, and she's wasn't very happy about taking orders from a guy without a defined rank even after I namedropped Weaver to get her attention."

"Somehow, I'm not surprised, if Dan was any kind of a mentor figure to her back then," Tom huffed a laugh. "Small world. All right; I'll ask him. You going to accompany them back?"

"From what they've said about the road north? Yeah, not much point to scoping Greensboro or Richmond until we can do something about the fences. And now that they know to watch Norfolk, the fishheads have probably got anything left there locked down tight."

"All right, then; your call," Tom said, then paused and cleared his throat. "You've, ah, you've been missed."

"Yeah? And how's the princess doing this morning?" John's tone was wry as he dodged the comment — but also honestly asking about Alexis' welfare; something Tom appreciated almost as much as he would have a more personal response.

"In the infirmary, actually. That's where I've been most of the morning," he explained.

"Sick? I thought she was done with her latest growth-fever?"

"Exactly — which is why Anne thought it would be the perfect time to try and stop it from ever happening again. I was out getting a breath of fresh air when you commed; after so many hours, I couldn't take staring at the sheetrock in the quarantine room a moment longer. Reminded me too much of when Hal had his eyebug."

John snorted. "Paint job might help — that whole underground mall space feels temporary, half-finished like it is, and the infirmary's the worst. Cheer the place up a little. It's not really the impression we want to be giving of the new capital anyway, I shouldn't think, not with a bunch of Hathaway's partisans about to descend on it."

"One more thing to add to my list of tasks this week," Tom sighed. "It's a good idea, though. Thanks."

"She'll be fine, though, right?" John dragged the conversation back on point. "Alexis, I mean."

"Anne and Dr. Kadar both think so, and I've got no choice but to trust them on this. But it's hard to see her lying there unconscious, hooked up to all those machines. The last time I saw someone being treated that intensively, it was Dan, and we nearly lost him."

"Yeah, well, she's a Mason," John replied, gruffly. "Not a one of you knows the meaning of the word 'quit'. She'll be up and around again in no time, pestering everyone with those serious questions of hers, just you wait."

Tom's mouth curved slightly — then faded into a frown again as he contemplated the distance John had yet to cover before he could see it himself. "Don't forget, you're part of the clan now, too. I fully expect you to make it back here in one piece. Shepherding that many people — it's going to make you a ripe target, coming back south."

"Provisional member," John scoffed — though he didn't otherwise deny it. "See you in a few days, Professor."

"All right. Mason, out," Tom replied, warmly.

There was a brief, somehow tense pause on the other end — then Pope signed off, too, ending the call.

Tom glanced up at the Liberty Tree again, eyes unerringly drawn to the metal leaf bearing Rebecca's name. He'd heard his wife's voice several times in his dreams lately; some of them nightmares, some not, probably stirred up by that VR interrogation device of Karen's that had made him relive a warped version of his pre-war existence. His dream-self had tried to apologize to Rebecca several times, for reasons he could never quite recall after he woke. But she'd told him not to be even more of an ass than he'd been already, and kept bringing up their old family custom of looking at the moon whenever they were apart. He hadn't told John about that lunar habit yet; maybe on the next call, maybe when he got back. But it had got Tom thinking about the branches of life: the roads taken and the roads avoided, and the human costs of those choices.

Lexie wasn't going to be one of them, though. Or John, if he had anything to say about it.

He tucked that thought close, then turned his back on the Tree and headed indoors.

He was most of the way back to the infirmary — with its bland white lighting, raw sheetrock walls, and sky-blue tarps hung everywhere for privacy; John really did have a point about painting the place — when he heard a voice calling, and turned to see Ben hurrying up from a side corridor leading to another of the mall's entrances.

"Dad! Hey, you got a minute?" Ben looked ... uncomfortable, though not urgently so. It reminded Tom of the way he'd often behaved as a kid when something had happened that he knew he should tell Tom and Rebecca about, but he really didn't want to explain. Most often after he'd been squabbling with, or covering for, one of his brothers.

Tom glanced in the direction of the infirmary, then back toward his son. Alexis would still be out a while yet, and she had her mother's full attention. He could spare some time for Ben's problem. "Sure, son. What's up?"

Ben twisted his hands together in front of him, not quite wringing them, but close. "Actually, would you mind if we talked in your office?"

Okay — so it was a Presidential thing, then, not a personal one. Or else — something too personal to be spoken of in the hall? Tom had been half-expecting one of his sons to tell him they'd got someone pregnant, or caught one of the STDs passing around Charleston, sooner or later; he hadn't exactly set a good example on that front. Given an environment well supplied with adrenaline and danger and poorly supplied with prophylactics .... Tom tried very hard not to pay any attention to the details of his older children's romantic lives, for everyone's peace of mind. It was one thing to be aware that Hal and Maggie shared a room, and that Ben shared a connection with Denny through their spikes that no ordinary human relationship could match; he really did not need to know the details.

"Sure, Ben. Should I call anyone else in?" he asked, casually.

"Uh, no; not yet, anyway. Maybe Anne and Dr. Kadar at some point — but not just yet." Ben made a frustrated face as he fell in beside Tom, headed in the direction of the Presidential office.

It was a little surreal to realize that Ben was very nearly as tall as his father, now; and to remember that the last time he'd seen Ben and Hal standing next to one another, they'd been virtually the same height. Another consequence of the Skitter harness, perhaps? It made him seem much older than his actual sixteen.

"Is this about Alexis, then?" He could think of few other reasons for that pair to be involved before anyone else.

"Uh — no? Well, yes; but it actually has more to do with you." Ben's frown deepened.

"Okay, now I'm really curious," Tom said, nodding to the sentry outside his office as he opened the door and admitted Ben inside. He hadn't shared Dr. Kadar's report about his own DNA with his sons yet, so what could Ben be talking about? "Tell me. What's going on?"

Ben swallowed, then licked his lips nervously and came farther into the room. "It's — the rebel Skitters. A new group of them showed up asking for refuge after the latest attack. Apparently, a lot of their embedded spies have started going missing, starting about four weeks ago; at first they thought it might have been normal disruption of contact due to the sudden retreat north away from the Volm, but the problem's only gotten worse since the Espheni came back and tried to fence us in. And now these refugees — they say the Espheni have figured out how to identify them somehow, and they're making the spies and sympathizers disappear one by one."

"That can't be good," Tom replied, alarmed. He wasn't sure what that had to do with him and Alexis, but it was clearly a significant threat to the war effort. "They've made a real difference in this fight over the last couple of years. Do they have any idea how the Espheni are tracking them down?"

"No," Ben shook his head, "and that's not even the worst part. They think ... well, that it's like with us and the fences. No bodies have turned up; the fishheads aren't killing the rebels they capture anymore. But none of the missing have resumed contact, either. The rebel leader thinks they're transforming them somehow, taking their free will again and turning them into something else."

Tom remembered John's description of a new flying creature north of Charlotte, and thought he might have some idea what they were being turned into. It was a horrifying thought, and said a lot to him about what 'peace' meant to the Espheni who'd hoped to use his daughter as their enforcer. "Well, tell him I appreciate the heads-up. And make sure he knows we still value the alliance, even if they can't provide as much intel as before."

"That's not all, either," Ben said hesitantly, wringing his hands further. "Though the last part is — more weird than worse? One of the new Skitters was apparently at the structure in Boston when you were there. When you killed Karen. Not one of the lieutenant types; one of the background guys. But he said he knew some things, about why they're so fixated on you ... and about what happened to Alexis while she was there."

Tom flinched, feeling as though he'd just been struck with a jolt of electricity. So it did trace back to Red Eye's experiment and its fallout, after all. "What exactly did he say?"

Ben shook his head. "He wouldn't tell me or Denny; he said he needed to talk to you, first."

Because he was the one involved? Or because .... "He knows we got rid of Karen's moles, right? And even if we hadn't — now that she's dead, no one else would be able to access any eyebugs she planted."

Both Lourdes and Hal were still recovering from the experience of being remote-puppeted by an Espheni Overlord; Hal was carrying a lot of misplaced guilt, and was more generally suspicious of others, and Lourdes had a disturbing tendency to leap on the least little wish he or John might express in her presence because they'd been the ones to figure out what had happened to her and stop her before she could implement any of Karen's planned acts of mass destruction. Anne was very stringent about examining anyone who'd had contact with Espheni biologics now, to prevent anything similar happening at a new Overlord's instigation.

Ben nodded jerkily. "He was thinking about their old leader, Red Eye, when he talked with me about it."

Even though he'd already guessed that much, the confirmation still came an unpleasant blow to Tom. He'd originally met the red-eyed Skitter when he'd tortured him, then deliberately freed him, the first time Tom was captured by the Espheni. The alien had later died helping the Second Mass destroy a massive Espheni device meant to keep the Volm away from Earth before the grid went up. Red Eye had been fixated on Tom the entire length of their acquaintance, and the other members of the Skitter resistance had unquestioningly followed the alien's lead in using Ben — and by extension him — as their primary liaisons with the human fighters ever since. But more recent revelations had made it clear that that hadn't been his only purpose in favoring Tom Mason.

"Well. Sounds like I ought to talk to him, then. Where can I meet him?"

"Out near the perimeter? He's willing to leave the bunker, but he won't come underground; most of the new recruits still feel fairly uncomfortable around this many humans," Ben grimaced.

Tom sighed and rubbed a hand over his beard. He'd been planning to spend some more time at Alexis' bedside; but he'd kick himself later if he put this off and something happened that could have been averted if only he'd taken the time to communicate. That kind of thing had bit him on the ass one too many times already.

"All right. Let him know I'd like to meet this evening, if possible; and that I may bring Colonel Weaver with me. I'm going to go check on your sister again; you can find me there when you get back."

The relief on Ben's face told him he'd made the right decision. "Thanks, Dad. And — can I tell them about the plan to take down one of the fences? They're just as anxious to strike a blow again as we are."

Tom worried his lower lip, considering that; from a strictly op-sec point of view, it was probably a bad idea, and if John had been there he'd have raked Tom over the coals for even considering it. What if one of the rebel Skitters ended up captured before the attack and interrogated by an Espheni? But there came a time when secrecy hurt more than it helped. "Yeah, go ahead. We may need them to come up with strategies to deal with the transformed Skitters, whatever the Espheni might have done to them, when we liberate Charlotte."

Ben's smile was a hopeful thing as he left: at harmony between his human side, and his alien allegiance.

Tom only hoped — now that some answers might finally be on the horizon — that whatever Red Eye had done to him wouldn't damage his own allegiances. John had taken it surprisingly well, and Anne and Dr. Kadar were more fixated on what it meant for Alexis, but when it came out, if it came out, to the rest of Charleston ....

He shook his head, then got up to pour himself a glass of scotch. He was still adjusting to the new definition of 'normal', with its ever-changing and ever-weirder permutations, and he suspected it would take a lot longer before he was completely at ease with it. How could he expect more of anyone else?

But on the other hand — "Worry does not empty tomorrow of its sorrow. It empties today of its strength," Tom murmured, reflecting on the fortitude of a woman who had saved many lives in Nazi Germany before surviving a concentration camp herself. Then he put the glass on his desk, told the sentry to send someone to tell Dan where he'd be, and headed for the infirmary.

They'd finished running Lexie's blood through the machines by the time Tom arrived back at her bedside; she still looked pale and wan lying tucked into clean, worn sheets, but her face showed the serenity of true sleep, not tense, drugged unconsciousness. Anne gave him a tight smile as he entered from her chair on one side of the bed; Tom took the other, lowering himself to a seat and then reaching to clasp his daughter's lax hand.

He'd known Alexis so little time, and she was already on the cusp of becoming a woman. They'd skipped right past the infant stages and accelerated so swiftly through the early years of play and discovering the world that it felt almost as if they'd leaped from birth to teenagerhood in one long step. But if this worked ....

"How is she?" he asked, quietly.

"So far, so good," Anne replied, reaching to tuck a lock of long dark hair behind Alexis' ear. "It may be a little while before we know whether the procedure was fully effective, given that she had no symptoms outside of the growth spurts before, but we'll test her blood again in a couple of days and compare the levels of Espheni proteins to what we saw in Roger's previous tests. Best case, she never has another growth-spurt episode; worst case, the next one is delayed by weeks or months."

"Either way, it'll give her more time to grow into herself and her gifts," Tom said, then looked up and met Anne's gaze. "As for what those gifts might be — Ben says one of the rebel Skitters brought in in the last few days was in Boston, and had some insights on what Karen wanted with me — and with Alexis. He asked to meet with me later. I don't know how much he knows, or if he really does know anything, but I thought you'd want to be aware."

"You'll tell me what he says?" Anne stiffened in her seat.

Tom nodded. "Yes; of course. Like I said before, you're her mother, and even if you weren't, I'd still want your advice. I can talk to Doc Sumner if I need technical details on a medical topic, or Dr. Kadar for mechanics, but when I need advice about the human side of the equation, you're still my first stop."

She nodded tightly, then frowned more deeply. "And you're sure you can trust whatever he does tell you?"

It seemed a little late in the game to ask that question. "The rebel Skitters have always proven to be our allies in every other area, and until we know more about Red Eye's intentions we can't hold his personal project against them in general. The only time their intel or assistance failed us was when Karen deliberately leaked false information about you and Alexis to bait me into a trap," he reminded her. "We have no reason not to trust him."

Anne waved a hand in front of her in a negating motion. "I don't mean whether or not he'll tell you what he thinks is the truth. I mean, what if all he knows are the same lies that Karen was feeding Lexie?"

That made more sense; and it had been a worry for him, too. But failing to ask the question for fear they already knew the answer was a self-defeating proposition. "We cross that bridge when we come to it," he shrugged. "Or build our own deck to get over it, if we have to. Like every other crisis we've faced since the Second Mass decided to keep fighting even after the rest of the Boston militias fell."

"I suppose you're right," she said, smiling reluctantly again. "Even if the information doesn't turn out to be useful — at least we'll know that avenue's closed to us."

"Right," he nodded, then chuckled dryly. "You know, the first time Red Eye came to us — a Skitter wanting our help? The only thing I could think was that it didn't actually matter whether or not he was telling the truth. Either way, I could only see our situation getting worse, at least in the short term. What mattered in the end was that just being able to ask the question opened options to us that we hadn't had before. That's why I really balked at Dan's order to blow him away, not because I actually believed him then."

Anne shook her head, still smiling faintly. "That incident didn't really help your stock with those who were convinced you came back tainted from your time on the Espheni ship, you know."

"I know. I knew even then. And hey, it actually turned out to be true, so it's not like I can hold it against him. Them," Tom corrected himself. John hadn't been the only one upset about it; just the most vocal.

"So that's how you do it," Anne blurted, cocking her head to one side.

"Do what?"

"Rationalize all the things he said before — the insults, the accusations, the arguments — with what you are to each other now," she said, in the tone of one having a revelation. "What you said the other day, about knowing what's under the surface, and not having to lie to him ... this is part of that. It's not that you've forgiven him for it, and expect him to do better; it's that you don't hold it against him in the first place."

"I can't — not and live with some of the things I've said and done since this all started." He shook his head, trying to find the words to explain. "Humanity's enough of an endangered species as it is; there's no point letting the petty things divide us when there's so much else ready and waiting to trip us up. Not necessarily giving each other a pass — but putting it behind us, looking ahead instead of behind. We're stronger together."

"Ah." Anne looked down at their daughter, then up at him, picking up on the subtext there, too. "Point taken. Not so easy to stop feeling defensive of our choices, though, is it?"

"No; but I think it's worth the effort to try," Tom replied, quietly.

She cleared her throat then and sat up straighter, tossing her hair back over her shoulder, and adopted a pleasant, unworried expression: a window on happier times. "So. You're out of work early," she said brightly, as if she'd just caught sight of him.

Tom gave her a crooked smile, recognizing what she was doing. "Tough day," he said. "But I got the office work out of the way early. Might actually be picking up a new widget account soon."

"Oh, do tell," Anne prompted him, with the unshadowed easiness of the days when they had first gotten to know each other, before the potential of more had built into active interest.

So he told her: the basic details about Charlotte, about John's meeting up with the survivors of Hathaway's party, and about Dan's apparent connection to the soon-to-arrive Captain Marshall.

"That definitely bears further investigation," she said, teasingly. "Have you warned him yet? Or better yet — Marina?"

He gave a rusty chuckle. "Not yet. I thought I'd ask him to go with me to meet the Skitter, and fill him in on everything then. But ...."

He trailed off as the hand still clutched in his moved suddenly, fingers twitching inward toward the palm, followed by a faint noise of discomfort as Alexis' brow wrinkled.

"Hey, she's waking up," he said, leaning over the bed. "Lexie? Sweetheart?"

Alexis' eyes blinked open, dark like her mother's and a little muzzy with sleep. "Dad? You're here," she said, a luminous smile forming as she looked up at him.

"Of course I am," he said, squeezing her hand again, then nodded toward Anne. "And so's your mother."

Alexis' eyes shifted toward Anne, and her smile widened. "Mom," she said, squeezing the hand Anne held. "You're both here."

"Of course we are, Lexie. How are you feeling?" Anne beamed down at her.

"I'm glad. I like it better when everyone is family," she replied contentedly, then frowned a little and tugged her hands free of her parents' grip. She lifted them in front of her face, turning them over front to back, then flexed them and reached up toward the light overhead. For just a second, it almost looked as though her palms were glittering, reflecting the light like a mirror; then they were only skin again, and her expression of concentration lapsed. "I feel kind of achy? But I can hear it more clearly, now. It's nice."

"Hear ... it?" Tom said, glancing up to meet gazes with Anne. He tried not to let the sudden sense of alarm he felt infect his voice; Lexie was good at picking up the emotional states of the people around her from the tiniest cues, and he didn't want to upset her if it was something innocuous. "What do you hear, Lexie?"

She blinked, then lowered her arms and turned toward him again, eyes still looking a little dazed. "The song of the cosmos," she said, matter-of-factly. "Dr. Roger says everything in the universe vibrates at its own frequency. That's why glass can break if you sing at just the right note."

He nodded; destructive resonance was a concept he was familiar with, though he'd been much older than she seemed now when he'd learned about it. "Or that story about the collapse of the Broughton Suspension Bridge in 1831. They say it was caused by soldiers who were fascinated by the way it vibrated as they marched, and deliberately started stomping harder in rhythm to a marching tune."

She blinked slowly and looked up at the light again, spreading one hand against its glow. Foxfire glinted along the edges of her fingers, more noticeable this time, and she moved them back and forth as though playing the keys on a piano. "It really is like music. I can hear the frequencies, sometimes. They're so beautiful."

Anne swallowed hard, then spoke, keeping her voice soft. "You're hearing the light?"

"It always chimes when I touch it," Lexie agreed wistfully, still staring up at her waving fingers. "Every source sings a slightly different note."

Tom cleared his throat, reaching for something to say. "You should try moonlight, sometime. I know you don't see the night sky much down here. But it's — it's kind of a thing, with your brothers and I."

"Okay," she replied, then stretched her jaw wide in a massive yawn and turned slightly on the bed, curling up in a ball the way she usually did in Matt's lap. Within seconds, she was out again, breath fluttering shallowly against the pillow case.

Slowly, quietly, Tom got up from his chair and walked away from the bed, pressing a fist against his mouth.

Anne followed him, just far enough to be fairly sure Lexie wouldn't hear whatever they were saying. "I know she talks science with Roger sometimes — but this is a wrinkle I hadn't heard before," she murmured.

"It's a surprise to me, too," Tom replied, shaking his head as turned to look at her. "Like something out of a science fiction novel. Things like telekinesis, picking up on other people's emotions — it's strange, it's unusual, but there is precedent for it, in that there have been secret programs in various governments experimenting with documenting and reproducing those skills for decades. But the ability to hear vibrational frequencies, and even resonate with them, if that was what she was doing just now ...." He took a deep, calming breath, then let it out again. "It's the clearest sign yet that whatever Red Eye's reasoning might have been, Karen definitely intended to use her as a weapon."

"Tom, we're living in an alien apocalypse," Anne threw up her hands. "There's no precedent for anything that's happened in the last few years. But one thing I do know — this extra sense she has, this ability to hear 'frequencies', can't be something that's normal for the Espheni. The war would've gone far differently if it was. Maybe that's how Red Eye broke free from the control of the harness to begin with, if his origin species had these unusual powers; maybe more of the rebels have that kind of genetic background, or maybe he worked out a way to gift the capability to resist to other Skitters as well."

"Hopefully the Skitter I'm meeting with tonight will be able to confirm or deny at least some of these questions," he shook his head, taking a few restless steps away, then back as something else occurred to him. "If Red Eye made these changes to all of my DNA, and not just my gametes — I know she expresses it more strongly, but it's obviously not just because of the Espheni growth matrix if she's hearing frequencies more clearly with it out of her system. So why haven't I been hearing anything unusual, or throwing objects around the room with my mind when I have a nightmare?"

Anne bit her lip, then reached out to put a hand on his arm. "I actually might have an idea about that. A child's brain is far more flexible and open to novel input than an adult's. Alexis has been growing into her gifts, if at an accelerated rate; using them is actually changing the physical structure of her brain as her body ages."

"Right; I actually figured that was why they made the changes through a parent rather than directly — to grow children whose alterations were naturally a part of them, rather than modifying them afterward," he nodded. "Malleability; it's not something adults really have. So I could understand if the effects on me were just — weaker. But shouldn't there be something?"

She shook her head. "Maybe you are perceiving the same things Lexie is, you just don't know it. Your brain could be filtering them through some other sensory channel that you're already accustomed to. It's impossible to say."

Tom's first impulse was to deny that idea — he'd known something was wrong when he'd had the eyebug, hadn't he? But afterward he'd felt completely back to normal ...

...But how had he known about the eyebug? Neither Lourdes nor Hal had had a clue that they'd been infested. And he relied so much on instinct and seat-of-the-pants knowledge when events got rough, how would he know if he was acting on some scrap of information he'd somehow pulled out of the aether?

"I don't know whether to hope you're right, or be horrified," he said, huffing a disbelieving laugh. "Not that that's really anything new, I suppose. At least it's not on one of my children's behalf, for once. I worry a little more than is probably healthy about Matt — he's the only one of them not yet scarred in some way by this war."

"Wounds of the spirit still count," Anne admonished him, softly. "But he is remarkably resilient — and I think having Lexie around has helped him, too. Every time I watch them together, I wonder what it might have been like if Sammy had survived; if he'd have been as close a big brother, or if they'd have squabbled like Hal and Ben."

"So many children lost," Tom shook his head. "I haven't yet scraped up the courage to ask the Volm if they have any numbers on how many humans are still alive — and of those, how many are under twenty. Just from our observations, it seems like the Espheni could hardly have done more damage if they'd been trying to exterminate us ...."

He trailed off there, seized by a sudden, terrible conviction; the same feeling that had struck him when he'd been lost in the woods with John, contemplating the med pack Lourdes had put together for their trip.

...Was that a nudge from the cosmos? Had the revelation a month ago been, too?

"...Tom? Is something wrong?" Anne frowned at him.

"I ... something just occurred to me that I'm going to have to think about," he said managed to say, shaken.

All the assumptions he'd made about the war — all the assumptions everyone had made about the alien invasion and ongoing occupation — had been based on the idea that the Espheni had come to earth for material reasons; that they were seeking some resource, be it rare minerals to send back home, land to plant a colony on, or even simply water. Deny them that resource, make it cost more to take than it was worth to keep transiting Earth's gravity well, and surely they'd have to pack up and leave.

But they hadn't. And showed no signs of wanting to do so. Either humanity's efforts to fight back were just that pathetic, whatever resource they were there for was just that valuable ... or it wasn't actually a resource they were after, at all. And of course, he'd known about the side effects of the defense grid. What if that had been its main purpose, and keeping out the Volm just a useful side effect? But even if that was true — why?

"Well, then, get back to me when you've figured it out; it looks like your escort is here," she replied, tipping her head toward the doors.

Tom looked, and saw Dan following Ben in, both deeply involved in some low-voiced, frown worthy conversation. Matt trailed in their wake, carrying a book in his arms, but passed them when they paused just past the entry, headed for Lexie's corner.

"Later, then," he nodded to Anne. "Thank you, by the way."

"For what?" she wrinkled her brow at him.

Tom quirked a smile back, shaking his head. "For being here," he said. Then he turned and headed for the doors.

Dan and Ben stepped out into the hall with him, exchanging the usual handclasps and greetings. Then Dan cleared his throat and got to the point. "So Ben tells me we have a new guest who spent some time at that tower up in Boston?"

"Mm-hmm. I have a few questions for him, and thought you might want to be there."

Dan shook his head. "I thought we were done with that place when we came south; and doubly so since your little trip up there with Pope and Karen. But I guess a man never does quite leave his home behind."

"It all does keep coming back there," Tom agreed, regretfully. "Sometimes I wonder what would've happened if I'd never got on the ship with Karen, that day."

Dan snorted, giving him an exasperated look. "You been beating yourself up over that? Don't kid yourself, Tom; she'd have killed us both and gone after Hal anyway."

Tom blinked at his matter-of-fact appraisal, then gave the man a crooked smile. Trust Dan to see the concrete aspect of the situation first ... and blow right past all the guilty questions and what-if's Tom had been torturing himself with. "You're probably right. He ready for us, Ben?"

Ben nodded. "Up near the perimeter, but inside it, don't worry; I already confirmed that for Colonel Weaver. And he agreed to let a couple of First Continental patrol officers wait just outside the park; apparently, they aren't usually as hostile as the Second Mass irregulars."

Tom could almost hear John's voice in his ear, then, drawling an unamused imagine that. The First Continental had spent almost the entirety of the war underground, hating the aliens more in principle than in fact. He didn't think the way they reacted now necessarily reflected badly on either group; each of them had been shaped by their experiences into what they needed to survive, and the habits of survival were hard to break.

"Well, let's go, then. I have a few things to tell you both before we meet with him, about a few things I left out when we shared the news about Dr. Kadar's latest tests ...."

Dan stopped him with a hand to his shoulder just before they reached the postage-stamp sized, reclaimed park where the Skitter waited. It was a calm green space, fenced in with nearly whole brick walls and kept free of dust and more obvious weeds by the public works committee; it made an excellent place to talk in private. "Go on ahead, son; we'll be right there."

"Dad?" Ben hesitated, frowning back at them.

"Go on; we'll be right behind you," Tom nodded.

Ben glanced between them with a skeptical the adults are being adults again expression, but nodded gamely. "All right; just don't wait long. He's a little spooked."

Dan watched until he nodded to the sentries and disappeared through the gap in the walls, then frowned at Tom. "As much as that story sheds light on a few of your more mercurial moods of late ... that still ain't all of it, is it?" he asked.

"You do realize Ben can probably still hear us?" Tom deflected, lifting his eyebrows. It wasn't as though he had any proof yet; anything more than a vague and ominous hunch that he couldn't even be sure was meaningful.

"Probably and certainly aren't the same thing, and I've had discussions with him about this before; he knows when not to pay attention," Dan snorted, tone faintly chastising. "Your boys may all be as stubborn and reckless with their own lives as you are, but they also understand responsibility; Ben's no exception there."

"I know, I know, it's just ...." Tom waved that away. "Never mind. No, it isn't everything; but what's left is ... more speculation and feeling than fact."

"Well, you fill me in the minute it becomes more than speculation, all right? Or I'll tell Pope you've been trying to carry the whole city's burdens on your back again. Stubborn and reckless." Dan shook his head.

"It would almost be worth it to see the look on his face when he realizes you've turned to him as an ally in managing me," he replied, wryly. "But don't worry; I'll let you know. It's — to do with the Espheni motivation for the war; not anything immediately actionable. Just — significant."

"I get it," Dan nodded, then gestured after Ben. "All right, then."

"All right."

The Skitter waiting with Ben looked no different to Tom's eye than most of the others he'd met; apart from Red Eye, who'd had the distinctive scar and resulting ocular damage to differentiate him from the rest of his species, he had trouble telling them apart by looks. Personalities were easier, even filtered through Ben and Denny; they each had recognizable attitudes and phrasing. Though — even that was a peculiarity of the rebels, really; most of the Skitters he'd had the displeasure of fighting against over the course of the war had seemed aggressive, fatalistic, and universally more concerned with whatever their Overlord had set them to do than their personal wellbeing. As if they were little more than trained beasts, all bred and raised in the same mold.

If they did all manage to survive the war, and the rebel Skitters were left behind — and he didn't kid himself they wouldn't be; the Volm didn't seem likely to take them, the Espheni certainly wouldn't, and as slaves they had no possessions or home of their own — he'd have to spend more time with them, train his eye to their differences. Assess them as individuals, the way any sophont deserved. But for now, the fact of their wrinkled, leathery, greenish-brown skin, the six legs each ending in a tripod-like foot, the tri-fingered hands, the almost insectile mouth and backswept skull above unsettling dark eyes — it was hard not to look at them and just see alien.

Tom cleared his throat and nodded to the Skitter in greeting. "Good evening. Thank you for meeting with me. Ben says you have information I'd be interested in?"

The spikes on the back of Ben's neck activated with their usual bright blue glow, and his expression blanked as the alien spoke through him. "Greetings, Professor Mason," the Skitter said, using the title most of his kind still defaulted to with him. "I have information that may prove useful to you, yes; though I am not familiar enough with humans to gauge the level of your interest."

"Trust me, I'm interested," Tom replied, dryly. "You were at the tower in Boston?"

"Yes. As an assistant assigned to biomechanical engineering processes. I helped modify the parasitical devices known to you as eyebugs to work with human physiology, and worked on the second of two genetic editing packages intended for individual humans."

Hearing it stated that baldly was like a splash of ice water to the face. Tom swallowed hard. "The second one — that would be Karen's. The infection that made Alexis mature so quickly," he guessed.

The Skitter inclined its head. "Yes. I had no hand in the first, unfortunately, other than knowing the fact of its existence, and the criteria upon which it was meant to be applied."

"...Criteria?" Dan said, sounding highly skeptical. "Could you elaborate on what those criteria happen to be?"

"They have been the same on each planet since the birthworld of our race was destroyed, so long ago. I know them well, though few thought it possible they should ever be met. But you have done so; the Harbinger of the Last Mothers has arrived among us at last." The Skitter inclined his head again, more deeply than the first time.

The word 'criteria' had suggested there was a reason he'd picked Tom beyond mere convenience and attitude — but he couldn't say he'd been expecting anything like what the Skitter had just come out with. Now it seemed naïve that he'd only considered lying or mistaken information as possible complications to this meeting.

"...Harbinger?" he frowned. He wasn't sure he liked the sound of that. "What do you mean by Last Mothers?"

The Skitter ignored the second question entirely, replying instead with a list of what had to be the criteria. "The Harbinger must be an unharnessed sentient being; one capable of commanding the allegiance of its own species; one able to resist the pressure of an Espheni's presence on the shadow plane; one who will not give up before the task is complete. One who is willing to negotiate even with the most foreign of entities, but who also knows when negotiation must bow to necessity."

Tom shared an alarmed glance with Dan. He'd ranted to John once that the red-eyed Skitter chose him because he was uncivilized; because he didn't give up, and because he fought back even in a futile situation. But this list felt enough like truth to resonate in the same place behind his breastbone where his dread about the Espheni's purpose on Earth took root. "So it was never really about Alexis, or the possibility of a child like her?"

The Skitter made a casting-away gesture with one triply-clawed hand. "The hybrid has the potential to be a bridge between that which cannot be rebuilt and that which must not be destroyed; a fulcrum point, with the ability to bring prosperity and peace, if your species will accept it. But her power is only a fraction of the Last Mothers'. And when they come, they will need a voice through which to speak."

Tom swallowed hard as it sank in what was really going on: not the scientific horrors he'd been half-expecting when Ben asked him for this meeting, but religion. A Skitter religion. One he'd never had a clue existed — if he'd even thought they had the capacity for something like religion.

"Who are the Last Mothers?" he repeated, clenching his hands at his sides. "Are they from your homeworld?"

The Skitter ducked his head again, Ben's voice sounding increasingly agitated as he replied. "I have no homeworld. No species beyond what you see. He who kept the memory of the Last Mothers was one of the last of those altered by the first generation of harnesses. The one you call Karen took her inspiration for what was done to the hybrid from the method the Espheni use to fill out the ranks of their guards when depleted. And they spend less and less time on training them since human children have proved ... difficult."

Cognitive dissonance: that was the word for what Tom was feeling. It was rather like being slapped hard with a wet halibut. No wonder it had taken so long for a Skitter rebellion to build, if the majority of them quite literally couldn't even imagine any other life, speed-grown by a species that habitually used biological and chemical agents to override the will of those they conquered.

"Why tell me now? Why tell me at all?" Clearly Red Eye had never intended to.

The Skitter's mandibles worked restlessly. "She comes. She comes," he said, then turned abruptly away and moved rapidly toward the former Volm compound on six swift-moving legs.

Ben gasped as the spikes on his neck stopped glowing and bent over, bracing his hands on his thighs.

"Wait, you can't just —" Tom started to call after the Skitter, then stepped forward to grasp his son's shoulder. "Ben, are you all right?"

Ben took a few deep breaths, then nodded his head and straightened up again, giving Tom a troubled look. "He didn't want to answer any more questions — but he was bleeding all over the place mentally; I couldn't help hearing it. He's worried because too many things have gone wrong, and Red Eye was the last one who knew the whole plan, whatever it is. He doesn't know if the knowledge still exists to create another Harbinger if you die — and because of the way the Espheni are tied to all the Skitters through this shadow plane he mentioned, they can't modify themselves to speak with these Last Mothers when they arrive."

"Jesus," Tom swore automatically — then winced at the inadvertently topical comment as Dan chuckled in disbelief.

"More like John the Baptist," Dan shook his head. "Prophet for some alien Messiahs. And I thought this war couldn't get any more disturbing. What happens when you don't fulfill this Skitter prophecy?"

"I guess on the one hand, it's reassuring that even creatures from beyond our solar system have a system of faith. But on the other — can we really assume there isn't some kind of concrete reality behind it?" He sat down on a nearby bench, dizzied by the concept. If that was true — and what occurred to him earlier was also true, then ....

Then what, Mason? Going to let a little woo-woo Skitter philosophy throw you off your game? Tom could easily imagine John's reply. It wasn't as if even this materially changed what they had to do next, did it?

...No; but it might very well affect how they treated with the rebel Skitters. And that, he couldn't just blow off.

"Cochise," Ben blurted, perking up a little. "The Volm should know something, shouldn't they? If there's any substance to it? At least, what the original Skitters were — if it's possible Red Eye really was from that time. What their race was called. If they had powers like Lexie. There's gotta be something."

"Maybe. He says the Volm studied our history — if they know all that crap about us, they gotta know the history of the war their own people have been fighting all this time," Dan agreed absently, a glint in his eye as he stared at Tom.

Tom knew what that was about. He sighed, and nodded to his son again. "Thanks for the insight — and the suggestion. If Cochise does have any information, I'll let you know — but otherwise, I don't think I need to tell you to keep tonight's conversation to yourself?"

Ben opened his mouth to agree, then paused; and Tom mentally slapped himself. "And Denny, of course," he added, "since she's in the middle of all this as well. I think we can trust her to understand that we don't need to panic the people of Charleston before we have any real idea of what it means."

Ben winced. "Actually — yeah, that would be great, and I know she'll agree — but I was actually gonna ask, am I supposed to keep this from Hal, too? Then he might tell Maggie — and what about your —?" He coughed the word 'boyfriend' loudly into his hand.

"I think that question will become a little more relevant when the three of them are actually back in the city," Tom gave him an unimpressed look. "And you can refer to John however you like. Just so long as it's respectful."

Ben gave him a very skeptical look in return, drawing it out just long enough to make his point, then nodded. "Yeah, all right. He's been better anyway, lately. Kinda badass when he's not being cruel."

"I'm sure he'd be pleased to hear that," Tom gave him a tired smile. "Speaking of which. I should probably ask. Are you okay with all this?"

"The dad with alien DNA asks the son with a different alien's DNA?" Ben replied, very dryly. "Sure, it's weird. But it's still less weird to me than your thing with Pope, if you want the truth."

Tom chuckled ruefully and clapped him on the shoulder. "He said almost the exact same thing, believe it or not."

Ben scoffed, but looked mollified at that.

"Now, if you wanted to go back to check on your sister," Tom changed the subject, "she was awake for a few moments before we came out here — I'm sure she'd be happy to see you."

"She's okay?" Ben asked, perking up immediately. "Then it worked?"

"Anne thinks so," Tom nodded. "But we'll know for sure in a few days. Now go on; shoo."

Ben darted over to give him a quick hug, then nodded respectfully to Dan and headed back out for the stairs down into the mall.

Tom looked over at Dan, then, and sighed. "I'm not doing anything else tonight without a glass in my hand," he declared. He wouldn't risk drinking alone in his current mood, but he had a feeling Dan wanted to vent a little, too. "Want to go brave the Nest, or raid Manchester's scotch again? I don't much care which."

Dan tugged off his ever-present ball cap and ran a hand over his hair, considering. "Better make it the scotch. But let's stop by Popetown first, get one for the road. Press a little flesh. I could do with a little human rowdiness to balance out all the alien melodrama, how about you?"

He extended his hand as he spoke; Tom grabbed it and levered himself back up off the bench. "I think that sounds like just what the doctor ordered. Oh, and while we're there ... maybe you can give me the rundown on an army officer by the name of Katie Marshall? Turns out she was with Hathaway's people."

Dan sputtered, but his mood immediately shifted at the distraction, and he led the way out of the walled park with a renewed energy in his step.

Tom followed, determined not to think about anything else to do with grand destinies or the fate of the war for the rest of the night.

He began the next morning with a nagging hangover, squinting over the engineers' reports on the crashed Beamers. It turned out they had battery analogues but no fuel reservoirs, so they had to have been retooled for energy sharing, just like the fencepost. How exactly that worked, they hadn't figured out yet; another headscratcher to deal with later. Then he fielded another community meeting, letting everyone know about the incoming group, breaking the news about the fences and stressing that they had a plan for dealing with them, and finally renewing Anne's call for blood donations in preparation for taking in more refugees.

It wasn't until around lunchtime that he had a chance to glance over the inventories from the supply mission that had revisited Columbia and Winnsboro behind John's scouting party. Their contents were mostly the kind of mind-numbing necessary minutia that kept Charleston growing, from diesel to linens to dry goods to surplus clothes of all sizes ... apart from a few jars of pickled okra, of all things, and a note attached to a deflated football earmarked for Matt Mason.

Tom passed the football on, bemused, and kept the note. Matt's hobbies in recent weeks had consisted mostly of his nascent book club with Tanya and Alexis and his weapons practice, but he brightened right up at the sight of the ball and disappeared for several hours with his few age-mates among the militia families. It was good to see him behaving like a kid, even if the other boys weren't what Tom would call the best influences — or to be more accurate, were the sort of friends that brought out the bad influence in Matt. An afternoon spent at obstacle-course tackle football among the topside ruins seemed like a much more productive use of their time than blowing up windows in abandoned houses with sticks of dynamite.

Tom kept a jar of the okra, too, ninety percent certain that John had done the same, and split it with Anne as he shared the bare bones of the Skitter's news. He'd promised, and she did deserve to know.

She wasn't best pleased to hear that the Skitters appeared to believe just as much in some grand destiny for Alexis as Karen had, but was determined not to let it affect Lexie's life. Whatever differences he'd had with Anne, she would always and forever be on Lexie's side first, and in this case that was definitely a good thing. Fortunately, Lexie continued to show no signs of a recurrence of the Espheni infection responsible for her rapid growth; most of the time she seemed like just any other thirteen year old girl, if a little on the serious side.

Talking to Cochise ... did not go quite as well. If one defined 'well' as 'conducive to Tom Mason's peace of mind.'

"The species that the Espheni enslaved and mutated into the first Skitters, many generations ago, has been extinct in their original form for hundreds of years," the Volm said over the comm that afternoon, in answer to Tom's first question.

"Right. But could any of those — the ones turned into Skitters — still be alive today?" he tried again.

"It is ... possible, given the capabilities of Espheni biotechnology," Cochise conceded. "But extremely unlikely. Why do you ask?"

"Just bear with me a minute. Are you sure the original species, the — whatever they were called —"

"The Dorniya," Cochise filled in.

"The Dorniya; are you absolutely sure they're all extinct, or is this another 'extremely unlikely' situation?" he pressed, drumming his fingers on his office desk.

"That is what we were always taught," Cochise replied. "Have you seen evidence of another alien presence on Earth?"

Tom snorted ruefully at that answer. "Depends on how you define it, I suppose," he deflected by way of reply. "One of the rebel Skitters who recently turned up in Charleston mentioned a belief that beings he called 'the Last Mothers' were on their way to Earth."

"How did he obtain this intelligence?" Cochise asked, suspiciously.

"Not intel: belief. As in 'the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen'. I'm trying to get some kind of handle on how much of what he told me is based on fact, and how much is just wishful thinking."

Cochise muttered something low in his own language. Dr. Kadar had told Tom once that Volm was a very orderly, practical tongue; he had yet to find the time to try to pick any of it up, but cursing was about the most practical use of a language there was, and he recognized the stunned tone of a 'what the fuck' when he heard it.

"Yeah, that was about my reaction, too. But if there's any truth to it ...."

"That seems ... unlikely. The destruction of their species occurred before the Volm were drawn into the war, so there is little detail in our histories, but there is enough to be reasonably certain of their fate. The Dorniya were not the first race conquered by the Espheni — the available evidence suggests they have been enslaving planets across multiple galaxies for approximately fifteen of your centuries — but that world does appear to be the first the Espheni razed completely. Not one stone was left upon another, and the biosphere was completely eradicated, likely by a defense grid similar to the one that was activated here. For any of the Dorniya to have survived unchanged, they must have been off-planet before the conquest began."

"And you don't think that's likely?" He'd never given much thought to what might've happened to any astronauts up on the International Space Station when the Espheni arrived; they were undoubtedly long dead, if their electronics had been fried along with every other piece of advanced circuitry on Earth, but what if they'd been a little better equipped?

"Unfortunately, no; while their civilization was more advanced than Earth, they turned their technological mastery inward, rather than toward the stars. It is a matter of some speculation among Volm scientists whether the biotechnology used to create the first chemlocks was, in fact, a corruption of processes invented by the Dorniya themselves."

That was a horrifying thought; very Borg of them. 'We will add your biological and technological distinctiveness to our own. Your culture will adapt to service us.' He'd been in college, rooming with a Star Trek fan, during the epic Picard transformation cliffhanger; it had made an impression. It figured that the darker side of Rodenberry's wagon train to the stars would turn out to be the more prophetic.

"...You said multiple galaxies," he said slowly, playing that analogy out. "Just how many worlds have the Espheni overrun?"

There was a quiet pause on the other end; then Cochise said, "Ask instead how many worlds the Volm have freed; for they are as individual leaves on a vast tree."

Tom contemplated that image for a moment, and suddenly found Cochise's father's attitude a little easier to understand. So many worlds. So few of which successfully fought back, that the Volm hadn't known what to do with humanity's intransigence. Even if the Last Mothers were real, living Dorniya, how could they possibly make a difference on that scale?

He shook his head. Faith wasn't his business; his business was hope — if not for himself, then for others. And what difference would knowing any of this make to the average citizen of Charleston?

About as much difference, probably, as Cochise knowing the true reason he'd asked about the Dorniya. The Volm didn't need to know what Red Eye had actually done; if the knowledge spread, it could easily do more damage than good.

"That's ... a frightening thought," he replied.

"Yes. I find it is best not to think of it too often," Cochise said. "I am afraid the Skitter that spoke to you must have been ... mistaken."

"Right," Tom said, clearing his throat. "Right. Well, that's what I wanted to know. How goes your search?"

"Not well," Cochise answered, mournfully. "We have concluded that the Espheni must have spent the weeks of their retreat completing a new power source to supplant their previous reliance on found materials, but its location remains elusive. They have hidden its signature well."

"Well, keep us posted, and we'll let you know if we hear anything. It was good to hear from you, my friend."

"You as well, Tom Mason," Cochise replied, then ended the connection.

Tom stared at the communicator for a long moment, reeling from the existential weight of the conversation. Then he dropped his face into his hands, took a long breath, and decided he'd better find a better way to deal with it than the method he'd chosen the night before. Planning the liberation of Charlotte, perhaps.

What would John say, if he were there? For once, Tom's imagination failed him. He couldn't wait until the rest of his family was back where they belonged.

He stood, stretched until his back popped, then picked up his rifle and headed out to find Dan.

6. Carried Into Their Midst

"The first to be overtaken were finished off, killed, and it wasn't just a few people who died. For those who didn't die the chase was carried into their very midst when the insects caught up with them [ ...]"
— Popul Vuh, Part Four

At a distance, from the top of a long green slope overlooking the city, under a pale blue sky marbled with cloud, Charleston almost looked ....

Well, as ugly as ever, to be honest: a vast and sprawling necropolis of shattered concrete and rotting iron, like the aftermath of every doomsday movie ever filmed. From up there, you couldn't even make out the fourteen or so blocks that the residents had painstakingly reclaimed; the string lights and candles lit it up a bit at night, but the shored-up buildings and partially-cleared streets were all blocked from view by broken skyscrapers and tumbledown warehouses. But hidden in the heart of that slowly reviving wreckage, a little chunk of civilization bore John's name; and tucked away under the city, snug as bugs in a rug, were a few people who might actually give a damn if he hadn't come back from this mission.

He had a home, for the first time in longer than he cared to remember. And that made him want to use all kinds of sentimental terms to describe it. There hadn't been much metaphorical beauty in his life, until now.

It also made him a little reckless. But then, when had he ever hesitated to stick his neck out to an authority figure in the name of pointing out the bluntly obvious?

John glanced over to the pair of women who'd accompanied him to the top of the hill, absently scratching at his bandaged wrist. "Home, sweet home. It may not look like much from up here, but as Lieutenant Fisher probably told you, there's a lot going on under the surface. We've even expanded some since she was here last; total population's up north of five thousand now. Not sure the exact number, since our scouting parties keep bringing in scattered survivors, like Sara back there." He nodded over his shoulder toward the rest of their entourage, down the backside of the hill.

There was a bittersweet smile on Fisher's face as she stared down at the wrecked city; remembering the time she'd spent sniping from the ruins, then being blown up, captured, and subsequently convinced that everything she'd believed to be true was wrong, he figured. Marshall, though, with her carefully styled short hair, commanding voice, and apparent distaste for all things John Pope, wore a much more calculating look.

"It is a very ... informative ... view," Marshall said, inclining her head to him. "But why are we up here, and not already crossing the bridge?"

"Just one more thing I wanted to explain before we head on in," he said, meeting gazes with her. She ran a tight ship with her crew, but he'd overheard a few worrisome conversations among her guys about 'managing' the civilian leadership that he wanted to head off at the pass.

Her forehead wrinkled a little, and she turned more squarely to face him. "Yes?" she replied, neutrally.

"I know it probably sounds quaint to you. Being as how you've been in contact with Hathaway since the beginning, and all. I know it sure did to the lieutenant," he began, nodding toward the killer in question.

The corner of Fisher's mouth quirked wryly, though there were pained lines around her eyes as she pointedly stayed out of the conversation; yeah, she knew where he was going with this.

"But to the people of Charleston, Tom Mason is their President. Not their Governor, or whatever other polite fiction he may've dreamed up to make peace while Hathaway was in the city. Are they happy the old President survived? Sure they are. A lot of them voted for the guy. But do they give a damn in general about an administration whose first act in getting back in touch wasn't to try and communicate, find out what in the actual fuck was going on, but to murder one of the people who'd been defending them? Not hardly," he snarled.

Fisher flinched, but she kept staring down over the city, hands linked behind her back.

"Captain Weaver ...." Marshall tried to speak up, frown deepening as she stared at him.

"Colonel Weaver supports Mason one hundred percent. I know you've got a history with the man, but you start off by insulting his brother, that's not gonna end well for you. He's not even the highest-ranking officer in Charleston; that's General Porter, and he's also a friend of Weaver's from way back. Not to mention, he's the one who put Mason and Weaver together at the beginning of all this; they were founding members of the Massachusetts Militias together. So don't look to him when you take a look around, decide you don't like how we're interpreting the UCMJ and the Constitution and whatever the fuck else, and try to stick your oar in."

"Mr. Pope, I don't think I particularly appreciate your tone," she said mildly, arms crossed over her chest.

He hoped she let her hair down a little when she wasn't 'on duty', or Weaver was going to have a hell of a time running interference for the woman. John didn't think he'd realized just how much Weaver had softened since the early days of the Second Mass until that moment; either his former protégée hadn't had the equivalent of a Mason at her elbow to wear down her defensive edges, or she was on worst behavior until they proved worthy of her respect. Either way, it wasn't going to fly with him.

"And just to run down the rest of the administration for you," he continued, full of malignant cheer. "Mason's VP is Marina Peralta; it's true, she was a senator's aide in the old days, and Fisher may've noticed she's still figuring out what's important and what's really, really not under end-of-the-world conditions. But she likes Mason, and she's close to Weaver's daughter Jeanne, who runs the Public Works Committee. The chief of police — whenever they actually manage to hang the title on him — is gonna be Anthony, a longtime member of the Berserkers and also part of Mason's original scout team. The chief of the infirmary? The mother of Mason's daughter, also part of the Second Mass from day one, and not likely to be receptive to anyone trying to stab a friend in the back. Power and Light? BFFs with Mason's ex. The ambassador to the rebel Skitters? Mason's second son. Mason's eldest Hal, I believe you've met; he also has a voice in the cabinet. And don't forget the Volm; I don't think I need to elaborate on that point.

"Let me be perfectly clear," he concluded. "Even if the man was some jumped-up academic mad for power who seized the opportunity to put all his cronies in positions of authority ... the people love him. Tom Mason fights with them; he drinks with them; he made the deal with the Volm that actually let them show their faces above ground again; he helped rescue some of their lost children; he's the face they've seen championing their cause since day one. It's true you got fifty-plus troops here that've got no reason to be loyal to the man, and you might find some supporters in the First Continental who were here before we arrived. But I'd advise taking a good look around first. Or — don't. But don't be surprised at the results."

Marshall's expression had grown more thoughtful than hostile as he laid it all out for her. "I'll take your concerns under advisement," she finally said, archly. "If you'll tell me one thing."

"Lay it on me," he replied, spreading his arms wide.

She looked him up and down, then shook her head. "You listed a lot of other names. But you're the one standing there defending Tom Mason like it's your right. So what's your position in the city?"

What was with strange women asking him that question? Shame there was no Maggie to run off at the mouth on his behalf that morning. He'd spent the last few days figuring out how to deal with the fact that Mason seemed determined to push right past the 'fuckbuddies' category to a full-on committed relationship; something John had never attempted with a man before, for damned good reasons. But he'd be a day late and a dollar short to try to equivocate now. And he'd just got done lecturing the woman about trying to uphold the old world's boundaries.

"Haven't you been paying attention?" he grinned toothily at her. "You're talking to the First Boyfriend."

That snagged Fisher's attention away from the view; she whipped her head around, staring at him. "That's ... not the impression I got when we flew to Keystone," she said, incredulously. "He called you the mechanic; and you said you didn't think you'd have much to contribute to any conversation with President Hathaway."

"Yeah, the boyfriend thing would be what you'd call a recent development," he drawled. "But don't take what you saw then for granted, either. I've always been Tom Mason's foil; his devil's advocate, his agent provocateur. His lifeline when he goes too far down the rabbit hole. The Scully to his Mulder, if you will. Because while he's a smart, pragmatic guy — he still wants to believe in the inherent goodness of people. I know better."

Marshall's expression cleared, and she nodded, slowly. "I see," she said, reflectively.

She didn't clarify what, or why, she saw; but John would take that as a win, for now. "All right, then," he said, gesturing back down to the milling troops.

Tector had been waiting at the bottom of the hill, rifle slung casually in his arms; he looked relieved as they came back down, nodding respectfully to John. "All good, Boss?" he said.

"Yup. Looks to be a clear day. Want to call it in, Junior?" he asked, fishing the communication device out of his pocket and holding it up as Hal strolled up to their little party.

Hal raised his hand, and John tossed it over. He'd have done it himself, but it made a better show this way, and it would improve Mason Mark II's mood; win win for John, even if he didn't get to hear Tom's voice.

That done, he rounded the rest of his people up and headed for their horses. He saw Marshall heading for the Humvees, as well — but to his surprise, he saw her beckon a second lieutenant named Wolf to join her, instead of Fisher as he'd expected. Her expression was friendlier than anything he'd seen out of her so far; maybe she really had been fronting with them as much as they'd been fronting with her? He'd keep an eye out regardless.

He checked his horse's girth, out of recently and awkwardly acquired habit; then he swung up into the saddle and made his way to the front of the pack, mind already far out in front of him.

Honey, I'm home.

The big bridge leading into the city had been a wreck when the Second Mass had arrived the year before; it had been one of the first big public works projects of the Mason regime, after the Volm had set up their bunker and assigned a few of their number to help guard the city. The current bridge was a wood construction neither as wide nor as sturdy as the old-world rebar and concrete span, but it was more than adequate to support a typical scout group's load-out, as the Mega-mechs that had crossed it in the recent attack had used to their benefit. They might have to cut their losses and drop it if they had to field another attack the size of that one, but for now it was still intact, ready and waiting to usher them in.

Hal's conversation with his father seemed to have stirred the city like a kicked anthill; a sizeable party of folks were waiting at the other end, Mason at the front with Weaver at his side. From the length of the bridge, Weaver looked eager but apprehensive to John's practiced eye; arms crossed in front of him, squinting, rocking slightly on his feet. Tom, on the other hand, looked pale and as wrung out as an old dishrag; several times in the last few days he'd said he'd have a lot to tell John when he was back, and whatever it was must've been eating into his rack time. It looked like a little old-fashioned Pope-style distraction would be in order, that evening.

He grinned to himself as they started over the bridge, horse riders first followed by Marshall's Humvee with the rest of the vehicles and bikes strung out behind them in a long chain. "Hey Mason," he called loudly as the sound of hoofstrikes clopped out through the clear afternoon air. "Look what followed me home! Can we keep 'em?"

He could see Tom's mouth crease in a wide smile; and behind him, he could hear the Berserkers chuckling, over the rumble of the Humvee's engines.

Except ... there was something wrong with that sound; a distinct buzzing threaded through the usual motor noise. It wasn't like anything he'd heard before, and in this world, the unfamiliar was usually a threat. He swiveled abruptly in his saddle, looking behind them — and caught sight of the huge, dragonfly-winged things just as they stooped to strike at someone on a bicycle toward the back of the group.

"Flying Skitters!" he shouted at the top of his lungs, grabbing for his rifle. "Take cover! Take cover!"

The unfortunate soldier screamed as the oversized hornet plucked him into the air and immediately banked away from the city, flying back in the direction the swarm had come from. A couple of rifles barked, including John's, but it was moving fast, and the majority of Marshall's soldiers not already safe inside a vehicle were dropping their bikes and scrambling to get out of the open, not taking the time to aim their weapons.

John shot at the next one, then dropped the rifle as his horse neighed and shied uneasily under him. He swore, then drew the Volm gun he'd kept with him as a good luck charm ever since his last involuntary visit to Boston and swung down from the saddle, slapping the horse on the rump. It darted immediately across the bridge, hopefully headed toward the stable; he heard a scared shout and a thump off to his right as Sara's horse apparently tried the same trick and dumped her to the planking. He couldn't look, though; a winged form darted down from the buzzing cloud directly at him, and he had to pump three shots into it before it fell, smoking, at his feet.

Up close, they were even uglier than in the air; mostly Skittery in the head and torso, but with an elongated tail and four wings in place of four of its legs. The remaining legs were undersized and tucked up against its body, and the pincer arms were weird-looking as well, chitinous and stiff; it made the thing look even more like an insect than Skitters did already. He swore loudly and kicked it in its grotesque face, then turned to find another target.

The other Berserkers appeared to have followed his lead and freed their horses, leaving them afoot; Lyle had handed his Volm-tech pistol off to Sara and was practically standing over her with his rifle as the rest of them porcupined up again, watching each other's backs and thinning the swarm with their usual accuracy. Two more of Marshall's folks went screaming off into the sky from the middle of the column, but Tec brought one of them back down; the soldier hollered again as he hit the ground, but it looked like he was still moving, so whatever he'd broken was probably worth it. Marshall herself, the two lieutenants he'd met, and a couple of sergeants had formed a fire line as well; everyone else was either taking potshots from inside their vehicles or forming up at the other end of the convoy under the direction of another lieutenant named Shelton.

John kept firing, as swiftly as his gun would recharge, scooting over to put his shoulder against Marshall's. It would be a waste to have brought her all that way and read her the riot act just to lose her to one of the goddamn Espheni prisons. That's what this had to be about; somehow the fishheads had figured out where the survivors of the last attack were going even after he'd shrouded the engines — maybe by some kind of evidence they'd left behind, maybe by logic — and were trying to collect the rest before they could reach the safe haven of Charleston.

He heard more shots ring out from the other end of the bridge; good, more of them than just Mason and Weaver had brought their weapons, even though they'd been expecting a friendly welcome. But — on the other hand, not good; were the hornets attacking the Charleston group opportunistically, or did they have another goal as well?

Another ugly corpse fell twitching at his feet — this one, shot by someone else while he'd been picking off a hornet stooping over the Berserkers — and he paused long enough to give Marshall an acknowledging nod. Then he saw her expression change, her gun lifting again just as something whipped around his chest, pinning his arms to his side with crushing force. He had just enough time to look down and see one of those long, ugly tails wrapped around him before he was jerked straight off his feet, the ground receding beneath him.

By chance or by design, the hornet had flown up and back, keeping John's body between it and the majority of the defenders. He heard a couple shots whip by, but neither of them hit. He was already a dozen feet off the ground; pretty damn soon, a fall was not going to be survivable. Someone out there — more than one someone — in the distance was shouting his first name, and there were a few calling his last name, too, amid the continuing gunfire.

Not this way, he thought through the choking pain and shock; no way in fucking hell.

Fortunately — or unfortunately — it wasn't the first time he'd been wrapped up in fishhead biotech and forced to shoot his own way to safety. He squirmed in the Skitter's grip, leaning to one side as far as he could and twisting his weapon hand back as far as it would go. The bug was a pretty big target, and the risk of a nasty graze seemed pretty small compared to what would happen if he didn't free himself. Not ever again.

John pulled the trigger, and nearly blinded himself with the blast of blue energy. The Skitter's wings stuttered and dipped a little in the air, bringing him back within ten feet or so of the ground, then went still just as the muscled tail went slack around him. He thrashed, but he was already tipping backward at an unrecoverable angle before he managed to dislodge it; all he could do was let himself relax and hope for the best. He felt his left foot strike first, then his ass as he collapsed in an effort to bleed momentum — and then his back was bouncing off the squashed, scorched corpse of his kidnapper, knocking the rest of the air out of him.

"Pope! Pope?" A blurry form with long blonde hair stooped over him as he dragged in a gasping breath, near to gagging on the smell of crushed bug.

He looked blearily up at her, and gave an awkward nod. "Hey, Mags. Gimme a sec, would you; I — shit!" His left ankle was already twinging, and he had a feeling he was going to be aching like crazy elsewhere in another minute, but there was nothing wrong with his gun arm; he swept the Volm weapon up and knocked another hornet darting toward her back right out of the sky.

She flinched, looking wide-eyed back over her shoulder, then shook her head as he slowly sat up, testing himself for any worse injuries. "Clearly, you're going to be fine; I don't know why I thought otherwise," she said wryly, holding a hand down to him.

He smirked at her and took it, using the leverage to get back to his feet, then glanced back toward the other end of the bridge, where the bulk of the swarm seemed to have moved. Only about a third of them were left; he didn't think they'd managed to get more than a handful of victims, which was probably luckier than they ....

His gaze met Tom's, a football field's worth of space still between them, and all thought momentarily fled at the naked emotion written all over the man's features. Then, within that heartbeat's worth of time, all the remaining flying Skitters dove right at the gathered knot of Charleston's finest, and John realized how stupid he'd been to so much as think the word 'lucky'.

"No!" he shouted as Tom disappeared behind a moving wall of winged enemy. He fired at them as quickly as he could without risking hitting anyone human; but it wasn't enough, not for the numbers of those things. If they were fast enough, if they shielded each other with their own bodies ....

Sure enough, he saw one rising into the sky with a passenger, in the middle of a buzzing pack. Tom had been using a long rifle, too long to turn around in his arms the way John had his pistol, and they were taking no chances, darting skyward quicker than Tom could wriggle free. Everyone else at that end of the bridge was busy defending their own lives, too encumbered to react to their President's predicament, and he and Maggie were the only ones at his end even looking the right direction. He fired, hoping against hope, but all he had was the handgun, not a weapon designed to be accurate at that range, and Maggie didn't seem to be having any luck either.

As soon as they were out of range, the prize pack of Skitters took off after the others he'd seen depart, heading straight north at the best speed their wings could take them. John only became aware that he'd been shouting at the top of his lungs as his voice started to rasp painfully in his throat.

"No, no, no, no, no ....."

The rest of the Skitters left off bedeviling the group at the other end of the bridge as soon as the ones bearing their prize were out of range; either they'd decided to cut their losses, or their Overlord had realized he'd got what he came for. They zoomed up and over, following their successful brethren toward wherever they'd been spawned, and John snarled, taking a limping step in that direction, fully intending to follow them.

Two things stopped him almost simultaneously in the next few seconds. One was a hand wound into the back of his jacket; the other was a young woman's shrill, despairing scream.

"Daddy!" Alexis Glass-Mason called at the top of her lungs; John hadn't heard her voice since before her last age-up, but he knew immediately that it was her. And almost as though in answer to that desperate call, storm clouds began boiling up out of nowhere: great, dark, heavy-bellied things swelling up from the direction of the sea, crackling with energy as they grew to cover the sky.

"Oh, fuck," he muttered to himself, wondering if this was part of what Mason had been waiting to tell him.

Lightning speared down rapid-fire from the ominous wall of black and grey, and one by one, every hornet in that last cluster fell out of the sky — just barely too late to catch the group in front of them.

"Daddy," he heard Alexis wail again, brokenly, behind him. Maggie's grip on his back went slack as he turned to look, along with everyone else on his side of the bridge.

From the safety of her mother's clutching arms, a slender figure that strongly resembled a three-quarter-sized Anne Glass trembled, arms reaching after her father, a streak of shocking white bleached into her hair. For about half a second, ice chilled John's veins as he looked at her ....

...And then she began to sob, and she was just a child again, the same size as his own daughter. Who gave a fuck what she was; she was Tom's, and she was hurting.

The next thing he knew, he was kneeling next to Alexis and Anne, in the middle of a goddamn Mason group hug, his other arm around Tanya. Something deep in his backside ached like a motherfucker and his ankle was threatening to fold under him, but that hardly mattered; though he blamed the pain, later, for his inability to explain why he'd done it.

He could hear Weaver somewhere nearby yelling instructions, and Marshall somewhere further distant, giving her own orders. But they might as well have been Charlie Brown characters for all the words were registering.

John looked up at the sky in the direction Mason had been taken, then swore again as fat raindrops began sheeting down from the newborn clouds overhead.

He'd let himself forget: where there was beauty, there was also pain.

The fishheads were going to pay for this, if it was the last thing he fucking did.

"He said," John rasped sometime later, after all the wounded had been rounded up, the missing counted, the hornet corpses piled up to be burned, and the forty-some remaining folks in Marshall's group belatedly welcomed into town. The irritation in his throat brought on a cough; he rode it out, then took a sip from the glass of water someone handed him. "Mason said he was already planning the assault on Charlotte. How soon?"

"Now, Pope ...." someone on the other side of the conference table started to object.

He slammed a hand down on the tabletop, then shook his stinging palm. "How soon?" he repeated.

Weaver gave him an evaluating, haunted look. "You can't be sure they took him there."

"If we don't find him there, then we'll scout the next one and take it down, and then the next," he said, then coughed into his fist again. "I don't see what's so difficult to understand about that concept."

Porter looked at Weaver, then at him, then cleared his throat. "No one is saying we shouldn't liberate these prisons. But given the timing ...."

"No one's saying it, but we all know it. These are more than prisons, they're goddamn concentration camps," he rasped. "Their President's in one. Our President's probably in one, by now. I'm sure Marshall's people will want to come along, if you're worried about integrating them into the city with everything else going on. But I'm not sitting here and waiting when I could be out there, getting Tom back."

Porter exchanged a look with someone on the other side of Weaver; Marina Peralta, John realized, as he followed the general's gaze. Marina cleared her throat, then turned to him, a troubled expression on her face. "It isn't just Marshall's soldiers that people are worried about. It's ...."

"Alexis," he finished for her, a muscle in his jaw jumping at the realization.

She swallowed and nodded. "Everyone was aware that she's ... unique; but what happened on that bridge today is one step further than many are able to easily accept," she said, almost apologetically.

John snarled; he knew where that could easily lead. Straight to Anne picking up her skirts and running while Tom was unavoidably out of the picture and unable to object. Again.

"Then woman up and tell them to fucking deal," he growled at her. "She's a natural-born citizen of this grand experiment in apocalyptic democracy. She's also a fucking victim of this war, just like they are. She's got all the same rights they do, and she hasn't harmed any of them. Hell, she might even have saved some of their asses today. If you let a bunch of chicken-livered bigots make this place unwelcome for Tom's daughter after all of that, then you don't deserve the trust he placed in you."

Peralta stared at him for a long moment, hollow-eyed, then nodded jerkily. "You have a point," she said.

Weaver's eyes were still one him, cooler and more remote than they'd been in a while. "Time was, you'd have been first on the list of those claiming she was dangerous and needed to be — watched — for everyone's safety," he said, gruffly. "Or that sending so many of our resources out after just one man was an unacceptable risk."

John didn't even dignify that with an eyeroll. He knew exactly what Weaver had avoided saying. "You know, maybe there is a world out there where I could look at a terrified kid my own daughter's age and see her only as a threat. Or that I'd see those camps going up and not see the next best blow we could strike against the Overlords, regardless of who might be in 'em. Maybe I am that much of a hypocrite. Say that's true. Does it really make a difference right now? Are you honestly gonna argue with me about this?"

Weaver's jaw worked, then he shook his head. "Just making sure we're all on the same page, here."

"Great. Fantastic," he drawled, voice dripping with disdain, then coughed and took another long draught of the water, wishing for a nice cold beer. "So answer my damn question. How close to ready are we?"

Weaver exchanged a look with Porter, then nodded to him. "We can leave as early as tomorrow afternoon. Just as soon as everyone that wants to go's had a hot meal, at least eight hours of rest, and a trip to the infirmary."

In other words, they were waiting on the people now, not the planning or the gear. "Screw that."

"I'm serious, Pope," Weaver insisted. "Don't think I didn't see the way you limped comin' in here, and you're not the only one that got tossed around a little by one of those hornets." He rubbed at his left shoulder, and John noticed belatedly that he had a stained white bandage tied around his upper arm. "We'll need everyone as close to a hundred percent as possible before we go. Besides, that'll position us best to hit in the middle of the night, tomorrow night, when most of the prisoners will hopefully be sleeping and out of the line of fire."

"If Captain Marshall and her folks want to volunteer, I'll talk to them myself; otherwise, we'll find housing and temporary duties for them until we retrieve the President," Porter nodded.

"Which President, though? That's the question," John shook his head. "I wish to God we'd never rode out to meet 'em."

"But you did; and we'll just have to trust that was the right thing," Peralta offered, dark eyes sympathetic.

John snorted. "I have never in my life done anything because it was the right thing to do. Remember that, if any sudden 'unavoidable delays' should happen to crop up before the mission leaves tomorrow," he said acidly. Then he braced himself against the table and levered himself to his feet, nodding briefly at those around him. "Now if you'll excuse me, there's a few things I gotta do."

He hadn't actually finished his debriefing, but no one tried to stop him as he limped his way out, and the people he encountered in his halting stalk down the halls took one look at his face and ducked out of the way with surprising speed. The 'right thing' — she might as well have said 'the greater good', and there were exactly two things in all the world right now that qualified to him as 'greater good'. And one of those had just been taken away by the Espheni.

Fuck if he could explain how that happened. Mason was like the tide, with a sneaky undertow that caught a man right off his feet when he wasn't looking. One fight in a forest, one chance to see each other without their public masks, and John had suddenly found himself in the middle before he hardly knew he'd begun. Trying to hold back a little for his own sanity hadn't worked out so well, either. So much for self-sufficiency.

John pushed through the door to the infirmary, then came to a pained halt as he set eyes on his daughter.

Tanya was busy setting up an IV for a badly scratched soldier in a 14th Virginia uniform; one of Marshall's troops, quite possibly the one Tector had brought back down. The pain wiped out of his face like someone had taken an eraser to him as the medication began to kick in. John swallowed, looking at the slim dark-haired teenager in her makeshift nurse's uniform, a familiar battered book cover peeking out of a pocket, and remembered the voices he'd heard calling when that hornet had snagged him.

What would he have done if she'd been taken, too? Did it make him a shitty father to want to leave her behind again so soon? Well, that wouldn't exactly be news; she deserved better than a perpetually angry ex-con like John Pope. It was a source of endless wonderment to him that she was back in his life at all.

He took a half-step back, almost ready to turn and leave ... and then Tanya looked up and caught sight of him.

Her face changed instantly, the soothing, professional smile she'd been offering the wounded soldier falling away as her big blue eyes widened, shining with tears. "Dad?" she breathed.

John's mouth twitched in a wobbly smile, and he found tears starting in his own eyes. Damn it. "Hey baby girl," he said, opening his arms to her.

She rushed to him, throwing her arms around him, and buried her face in his shoulder. "I saw it grab you, and I thought — I was so afraid —" she said, voice choked with emotion.

"Hey, hey, I'm here, I'm here," he said. "Your old man's too stubborn to go out like that."

She sniffled, tightening her grip on him. "Lexie's so upset — is it bad of me to be glad you're still here, when they got her dad? I mean, I like Mr. Mason, he told me a bunch of funny stories while you were gone about the stuff you got up to before you found me, and I know you're like dating him and all, but —"

"Shh, shhh." He patted her back, grimacing over her head. "Of course it's not. And we're gonna get him back, don't you worry. A bunch of us are going out tomorrow evening, taking the train up to Charlotte to knock down the prison there. If that's where they took him, we'll have him back in a jiff."

She clung harder at that, her voice shooting up a register. "You're leaving again?"

He winced. "Sorry, honey, it's kind of my job. But I'm here tonight, okay? I'm here tonight. We'll have dinner, and talk about this book club you're having with Matt and Alexis, and you can tell me all about your job or whatever. I'll be here for breakfast, too. Then I'll go do my thing, and I'll be back the next day, all right? Skitters haven't got me yet; they aren't gonna get me now, either."

She took another shaky breath, then pulled back, looking up at him with wet eyes. "You promise," she said, more an order than a question.

What good were promises in this crapshoot world? But he couldn't let his little girl down again. "I promise," he assured her. Then he reached up and removed the Skitter claw necklace he'd worn constantly ever since he'd killed his first one, in her and her brother's name. "Here. Wear this for me the next couple days, all right? You start worrying about me, you just look at this ugly thing, and you remember what a badass your old man is. I'm gonna be just fine."

She took a deep, shaky breath, then let it out again and nodded, taking the necklace and sliding it on over the stethoscope she already wore around her neck. "It isn't ugly, it's cool," she objected, wiping at her wet cheeks.

Then she narrowed her eyes, looking him over more critically. "Wait, are you hurt? Has Dr. Glass looked you over yet? No, of course not, what am I thinking — I'm such an idiot!" She shook her head, then dragged him over to a chair. "Sit down, I'll go get her."

"Tanya ...." John reached after her, but she was already off, scurrying toward the corner of the infirmary designated as Dr. Glass' office.

The woman herself was bowed over her desk, face propped in her hands, but she looked up at Tanya's approach and cast her gaze down the infirmary at whatever his daughter was telling her. She eyed John up and down with a shrewd eye, then shooed Tanya back toward her former patient and got up, coming to deal with him herself.

He hadn't taken the chair — hadn't thought it wise, until he was ready to stay down for a while — so he met the doc half way; figured he might as well go ahead and get it over with.

She raised an eyebrow at him when she reached him, gesturing toward one of the nearby beds. "I was there when you crossed the bridge after ... everything that happened," she said sternly, "so I know you probably don't think you need the attention, but adrenaline can mask a lot of damage. So let's take a look."

John made a face. "I can walk well enough to go on the raid tomorrow, that's all I care about. I'll make it easy on you — give me a couple aspirin and send me on my way."

Anne gave him an extremely nonplused look. "And what do you think will happen if I tell Dan I'm concerned about your ankle, and that you shouldn't be going anywhere? Up on the bed, Pope."

"You wouldn't," he scowled at her.

"I absolutely would." She tipped her chin up, glaring him down. "I had a headache from the paint fumes in the room we picked for the new infirmary even before the shitshow out there today; I don't have any patience left for your bullshit. And if retrieving Tom in any way depends on something you might do, you are not going to be a liability out there."

He gave up at that point and let her bully him onto the thin mattress, examining his various injuries with clinical hands. She even tsk'ed over the scratch on his wrist; old news, now. He'd honestly forgotten all about the prior attack in the woods, but he had to go over that for her, too.

"Paint fumes, huh?" he finally asked, to distract her. "What color'd you end up going with?" Apparently, Tom actually had taken his advice on the subject.

"You talked to Tom about that?" she said, surprised; then shook her head. "What am I saying? Of course you did. For a man so concerned with looking respectable, he really doesn't give a damn about interior decorating, does he? Or exterior decorating, for that matter, as long as it's orderly."

"Lives in his head too much, that one. Someone's gotta point out the obvious, sometimes," John shrugged.

Anne looked up at that, and he met her gaze evenly; they'd talked around the subject before, and been talked to separately by Tom, but they hadn't really faced each other directly on the matter. Now that Tom was — well, no doubt already working on rescuing himself, yet again — he wasn't in the mood to tiptoe widely around her feelings anymore. They were going to have to reach an armistice at some point, anyway.

For a moment, he wasn't sure which way she was going to respond; the woman was Maggie's friend, after all, and the sheltered doctor who hadn't even known how to fire a gun when they'd first met had long since been burned out of her. Then she snorted, and one corner of her mouth curved up in a cynical smile.

"Maybe you'll have better luck with that than I ever did," she said lightly, carefully manipulating his ankle. Then she shifted the topic smoothly, asking about any other aches and pains he was experiencing.

By all rights, that should have felt like a win; John found himself swallowing back a lump in his throat instead, wondering where all this damn tolerance was coming from. It left him decidedly wrong-footed. He submitted as patiently as he could to all her poking and prodding and the Ace bandage she wrapped around his ankle, then took the aspirin he'd asked for in the first place and glared at the cane she handed him.

"You're not as badly injured as Tom was; or even as badly as you were when you were shot in the thigh. If you don't make it worse, the pain should clear up within the next few days as the ligaments in your ankle start to heal and the swelling goes down. But if you manage to aggravate either injury within the next twenty-four hours, I guarantee you won't be going anywhere outside of this city. Listen to your body, and play it safe," she told him, firmly.

"All right, all right, I'll take it," he said, then eyed her again, warily. "...If you'll tell me where to find your daughter."

She bristled back up instantly. "I don't think that's a good idea," she began, defensively. "Lexie isn't a danger to anyone. She didn't even know she could do that, and she's devastated about what happened. If you upset her ...."

"Cool your jets, woman," John held up a hand. "I got the impression from Tom there was a lot going on he didn't want to talk about over Volm airwaves — but whatever's going on with her, believe it or not, I like the kid, and I know what it's like to be horrified by something you did without really meaning to."

Framing it that way seemed to startle her; Anne sighed, then nodded, shoulders slumping in a way that told him how many people had already accosted her about her daughter. "She's with Lourdes right now; they're in her and Tanya's quarters. You don't ask Lourdes to leave, and I'll check in with her later about how it went," she conceded, a warning note in her voice.

"Fair enough," he nodded at her, then took the cane, gave his daughter a thumbs-up across the infirmary to show he was okay, and headed out into the hall.

He knocked softly at the door of the room his daughter and Lourdes shared, then eased it open slowly. Lourdes looked up at his entrance; she was reclining on the pillows on her bed, half sitting up, with Lexie's head in her lap. Except for the new pale streak in Lexie's hair, the pair of them could have passed for sisters with their similar coloring; might as well have been, too, the way Anne had always taken Lourdes under her wing.

Lexie didn't stir as he entered; Lourdes spoke quietly as she smoothed a hand over the girl's hair. "I'm sorry; Tanya isn't here. She's on shift in the infirmary right now."

"I know," John nodded. "I just came from there; Anne told me where to find Alexis."

Lexie stirred a little at the sound of her name, but didn't look toward him; her gaze was fixed on the wall.

"I don't think she wants to talk to anyone right now," Lourdes shook her head at him, sadly.

"That's all right. I'll do all the talking for both of us," he said, then limped carefully across the room, kneeling down in the girl's line of sight. The move pulled on whatever it was he'd bruised down underneath — he wasn't calling it a 'sitz bone', no matter what Anne said — but he did his best to keep the wince off his face. "Lexie?"

She blinked, but didn't otherwise respond, still staring past him with damp, reddened eyes.

"I just wanted you to know," John said, near as undone by that look in her eye as he'd been by Tanya's tears. Fucking Masons. "I'm going after your dad tomorrow. And I want you to do something for me while I'm gone."

That finally stirred her attention; she focused on him, a frown pulling down the corners of her mouth.

"Promise me you'll practice that shit," he said, firmly.

Lexie flinched, then stirred again and sat up slowly, bracing herself against Lourdes' legs. "What?" she said shakily, voice thin and tentative. "I thought — I thought you'd be —"

"Like all the other numbnuts?" he scoffed. "You know better than that, princess. And I know you: you're blaming yourself for not being quick enough out there, today."

Her lip wobbled again, and fresh tears welled in her eyes. "I tried to save him, Uncle John, I swear, but —"

"Shhh." John reached out and gripped her shoulder, gently. It was hard to see her as a danger, like this — and that was why he had to make her understand. "Of course you did. No shame in not being able to hit a target your first try — you know I know my weapons, and you didn't even know you could do that. Thing is, though. Now you do know. And what if more of those things come after your mother or your brother Matt while me and your dad are both gone?"

Lexie's eyes widened, and she brushed at her cheeks. "But people are scared of me. I could feel it."

"Yeah, 'cause it's new, and freakish, and you weren't in control. They're worried you might accidentally hurt one of them. So make a thing of it. Take someone with you, like Lourdes here or Dr. Kadar or someone they do trust, and find somewhere to practice. Not just the lightning — whatever else you can do, too. Make it ordinary, even if it is still a little weird. Make people yawn and think, 'oh there goes Lexie again, doing her thing.' And then when you gotta use it again, you'll know exactly what you're doing."

That probably wasn't the advice Tom would have given her; and he knew it might upset the applecart with Dr. Glass again. But he didn't think repressing it was going to do anything more than make Alexis resentful and scared of her own shadow, not to mention leave her vulnerable to further manipulation by the Espheni. Bad for her, bad for Charleston when the inevitable fallout hit, and bad for him when Tom came back to find her and Anne missing again. Better all around to make sure she had the tools to make herself safe.

He did feel a sense of vindication this time when Lexie nodded, then threw her arms around him in a quick, tight hug. He made the expected grimace and protesting noises, but didn't fight her off, either; he waited 'til she let go, then reclaimed his cane and levered himself back to his feet.

"All right then," he said, clearing his throat as he nodded to her, then Lourdes. "If Dr. Glass wants to track me down and beat me with my cane, you can tell her I'll be at dinner."

"I'll make sure she knows," Lourdes replied with a wry smile.

Dinner went by fast; he wasn't really up to moderating his temper in a room full of people jabbering about everyday concerns while Tom was out there, eating whatever the Espheni deigned — or didn't deign — to provide, but he'd promised Tanya, so he sat there and endured, ignoring everyone else's sideways looks.

She tried to keep his mood up, recounting nearly unrecognizable second-hand glimpses of him as the bullet-making hero of Kennedy High School, an opinionated gourmet chef to rival Gordon Ramsay, and the motorcycle-riding badass who'd helped break the siege of Fitchburg. Tom hadn't even been there for that last; he must've asked one of the other Berserkers for the details ... in the name of cheering up John's daughter.

Everything just seemed to cycle back to that; to the sight of Tom being pulled up into the sky, flailing in a flying Skitter's grip. He held it together as long as he could for Tanya's sake, then sent her back to Lourdes and Lexie and made his limping way up and out to the Nest, hoping to drown the rest of the evening among those who'd know better than to ask a bunch of stupid questions.

He made it about three steps in before he saw what he should have known he would, if he'd put any thought into it at all: the big smudged blackboard on the far side of the main room, chalked up with odds on the current and near-future status of one President Tom Mason.

He came to a livid halt, so furious that he literally couldn't see straight. It was a long moment before he realized the reason he wasn't moving forward was that someone had thrown an arm out to stop him, and that the silence in the room was caused by more than just his inability to hear over the grinding of his jaw.

"C'mon, Boss," Lyle said, low and urgent, in his ear. "You know they don't mean nothing by it. C'mon. I saved back a few bottles of the good stuff from the last batch — let's get you out of here."

He should have expected it. Fuck if it hadn't still caught him off guard, though, seeing it from the other side. If it hadn't been for the cane —

He let Lyle manhandle him out to the bus, and if later that evening he woke up, still drunk and feeling spectacularly alone, and if he so happened to stumble past politely blind sentries down to a certain apartment down under Charleston, well, no one said a single word to him about it, then or later.

He shamelessly downed more than the usually allowed coffee ration the next morning, managed a wan smile for Tanya, and then headed into the planning meetings with all the rage a man could hold burning in his heart.

"So. Charlotte," Weaver said, resting a forefinger over the map spread out on the conference room table. "For the most part, the plan's pretty much like Jacksonville."

Thick lines of dark ink spread out under his hand, marking the route of the Norfolk Southern Railway system, connecting Charleston to Columbia and Columbia to Charlotte. It had been a freight line, not a speedy Amtrak route before the invasion, but as far as the scouts had been able to tell it had mostly been cleared by people looting supplies not long after the trains had stopped. What minor repair or clearance expansion might have been needed through the bombed-out cities had been taken care of several weeks before, when they'd initially cleared all the north and westbound tracks to throw the Espheni off the scent of which grid tower they were targeting.

Hal cleared his throat, then spoke up. "I did some asking around, last night. One of the reasons I wanted to hit Norfolk Naval Base was because of the big tracked vehicles I hoped to find there. But it occurred to me on our way back — what about civilian sources? Turns out there was a Caterpillar place just up the road in Summerville that specialized in big earthmoving and construction equipment. We might not need it this time — but I'd like to send a squad out while we're gone, in case we need to take the grid gun offroading at the next one."

No one challenged the assumption that there would be a next one; Marshall was in the meeting, standing over at the wall behind Weaver, argument enough for that point of view. Even if they found Mason right away, they were still going to have to go back to find Hathaway, and odds were they'd find him in Richmond or Greensboro.

"Done," Weaver nodded. "Have the engineers write down the specs they think we'll need, and we'll get that ball rolling before we go. Good thinking there, Hal."

"Yeah, good thinking Hal," John said, irritably. "Mind always one step ahead, just like your old man's."

"Do you have a point to make?" Hal flared up, glaring at him. "Or are you just going to poke holes in everything, like you always do?"

"Easy, Hal," Weaver said, throwing a glance at the kid. Then he switched the paternally disapproving glare on John. "You got something to say, Pope?"

"Yeah, I got something to say," he snarled, glaring at the map. "The more time we waste here, the longer it'll be before that fence comes down. Riding the rail up's going to be a hell of a lot quicker than what we just did on horseback, but the tradeoff for that is that we're definitely gonna get ambushed along the way. Best way through'll be speed and overwhelming firepower. I got another of those mech-metal RPG's saved up for a rainy day; anyone figure out the munitions in Cochise's box of toys while we were gone?"

"Nothin' that'll be useful yet," Weaver shook his head. "But Dr. Kadar's team finally finished the energy weapon modifications; every single person on this mission will have access to at least one Volm-modified gun, and we'll have a total of eight of the anti-aircraft ones with us. It'll be risky, but they also won't be expecting anything like what we're about to unleash on 'em. Get in, raise hell, get gone."

"The rebel Skitters have agreed to participate as well," Ben put in his two cents. "They're just as angry about the hornets as we are about our people that were taken. The minute the laser wall is down, they'll dismount the train and distract the Skitter guards in the city. We can use their cars to load up the refugees — they'll make their own way back when the battle's over."

"That takes care of the ships and the ground troops — which leaves the mechs, the Espheni itself, and any flying-bug escort it may have for the rest of us," Captain Marshall spoke up. "These Volm weapons you've mentioned — they're effective against their killing machines? Not just the Beamer defenses that Lt. Fisher saw?"

"We can take the older models down entirely with EMP grenades; they don't field those much anymore," Porter filled her in. "But the newer ones — it'll take a few shots, but yes, we've taken them out with the energy rifles."

"Then my people are definitely in; this will be the biggest blow they've been able to strike since we went to ground in West Virginia." She met gazes very briefly with Weaver; he nodded to her, as professional a nod as he'd have given any of his officers, and Marshall's gaze flickered away again almost instantly.

Marina Peralta cleared her throat and spoke up then, drawing Weaver's attention back across the table. "Unfortunately, you won't be able to coordinate with the prisoners in advance, so I located a few megaphones to enable you to more effectively communicate your intentions and hopefully reduce the risk of collateral damage."

"I know Tom was worried about that," Weaver nodded. "Thank you; we'll make use of 'em."

"Don't thank me too quickly," she said, straightening her back and clasping her hands in her lap. She flicked a glance at John, opaque with some emotion he couldn't name, then back to Weaver. "I feel I must remind you that you will be taking the majority of our defensive as well as offensive capability with you on this mission. Hopefully we will be able to optimize this process in future; but at the moment, Charleston will be more vulnerable while you are gone than at any time since the Volm arrived. If something goes badly wrong, if you even suspect the tide is turning against you, then I am ordering you now to disengage and return to Charleston immediately with as much matériel as possible. We cannot afford a Pyrrhic victory, here."

"Understood," Weaver replied, jaw tensed; but John could see the gazes flying around the room, and knew as surely as he knew his own name that while the 'matériel' might make its way back — most of the personnel wouldn't.

Someone needed to teach that woman not to give orders she already knew wouldn't be obeyed: the next remedial lesson on her leadership curriculum. But it wouldn't be him, and it wouldn't be today.

"We done here, then?" he said, drumming his fingers on the edge of the table. "Any more last minute caveats or addendums? Or can I give my troops the go-order?"

Weaver gave him one last long look, then nodded. "Dismissed. Assemble at sixteen hundred. And Pope — you and your Berserkers will be riding with me. Be grateful you're going at all, the state you're in."

"Aye-aye, sir," John bit out, giving him a snappy salute, then shoved up from the table and stalked out the door, the fine bones in his hand aching from how tightly he was gripping the cane.

John spent most of the next few hours in the kitchens: hair tied back, sleeves rolled up, and the blast of the hot ovens baking the lingering chill from his bones. He was done with everything at the moment, and between his shitty mood and the fact that he knew Weaver would bounce him from the mission if he showed up smelling of liquor, holing up where he could do no harm seemed like the better part of valor.

It wasn't as though they had anyone else that really understood the art of baking, anyway; he hadn't had a decent slice of fresh bread since the last time he'd been up to his elbows in dough back in Acton, and the brick-hard little hockey pucks someone had tried to pass off as cookies the week before had been a disgrace. Whoever'd been in charge of the welcome dinner for Marshall's bunch had really been falling down on the job, in his opinion.

By the time Ox stuck his head in to let him know it was about that time — following his nose, he'd said — he'd made three people cry, but he felt a little less like he was going to boil over at the least provocation. Only one of them had been genuinely distressed, anyway; he was almost embarrassed for the other two. Had it really been that long since they'd had a decent brownie? What had they been saving that cocoa powder for, anyway?

People. Couldn't live with 'em, couldn't kill 'em. He gave his daughter a warm square fresh out of the pan with his farewell hug, and dared anyone to comment.

He probably should have saved another for Weaver. The colonel hadn't been kidding about keeping John under his nose, it turned out; John, Lyle and Anthony were all up front with him, the remaining Berserkers in the next car back with Hal, Maggie, and the rest of the Mason extended friends and family plan. A few more cars full of soldiers bracketed the extra-wide, heavy duty flat car carrying the grid gun and Dr. Kadar's team; the Skitters brought up the rear, venting nasal shrieking noises that made John shudder even from the opposite end of the train.

Under other circumstances, John might've been angry about the apparent demotion, but in this case — well, it wasn't like he'd be any further from the action, and it did mean he didn't have to deal with distraction of managing anyone other than himself when the fur started flying. He said as much to Weaver with a sardonic grin once they were in motion, and was surprised at the flatly annoyed look the colonel turned on him.

"I'm damn pissed at you, actually," Weaver said, sourly. "What's the use of figuring out how to trust someone if you can't rely on him in the clutch because he goes and loses his damn mind?"

"I don't think you've got much room to throw stones there, Cap," John replied in kind. "Or are we talking about Mason, here? Because in that case, I'd have to agree with you."

Weaver glanced at Lyle and Anthony, who were studiously keeping their attention on the instruments, then back to John, shaking his head. "The point is, I could've used you in a leadership role today, and instead, I'm gonna have to rely on Hal. And good as that boy is, I'm not sure I can trust Katie's people to follow the lead of a teenager who ain't even in uniform."

"...Which means you gotta hang back and be the boss, when you'd rather be in the thick of things," John narrowed his eyes at him. "You're just as compromised as the rest of us, admit it."

"You forget, this ain't the first time I've dealt with Tom disappearing in front of me," Weaver replied, jabbing him in the chest with a pointing finger. "It's just the first time he's meant this much to you, and suddenly, you've forgotten how to keep your eye on the ball."

"A man's gotta have his priorities," John didn't disagree, shaking his head and turning to look out at the passing terrain. "Speaking of which ...."

"So help me, if you say 'are we there yet' ...." Weaver turned up the glare several degrees.

"Far be it from me to disturb your delicate sensibilities," John held up the hand not bracing himself against the wall, then glanced forward again. "Actually, I was gonna ask, where's the damn aliens? I know they've got to've spotted us by now."

"Oh, they'll be waiting for us," Weaver grimaced, shaking his head. "Just you wait."

...For maximum psychological impact, maybe? Whatever the reason — Weaver was right. Ten minutes shy of the fence, a pack of Mega-mechs came into view, straddling the tracks with weapons hot.

"Here we go again," John shook his head, then shouldered his weapon and prepared to fire.

>> Parts 7 & 8

S	M	T	W	T	F	S
				1	2	3
4	5	6	7	8	9	10
11	12	13	14	15	16	17
18	19	20	21	22	23	24
25	26	27	28	29	30	31

Fic: Now That the Dawn Has Come, 3/5 (R; Falling Skies; Mason/Pope)

Fic: Now That the Dawn Has Come, 3/5 (R; Falling Skies; Mason/Pope)

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