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

[jedibuttercup]

<< Parts 7 & 8

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9. The Roots of War

"Such were the roots of disturbances, of tumult and war."
— Popul Vuh, Part Five

 

That last stretch of highway into Charleston, with the sun breaking over the horizon and limning the world in shades of bronze and burnished gold, felt curiously like the dawn of a whole new world to Tom. Nothing had really changed the night before — and yet it felt as though everything had, somehow. The promises he and John had made to one another weren't anything he'd have looked for or expected before that eventful flight north to West Virginia; and he was a little concerned how Dan and his older two kids would react to the idea that the relationship was more than just a fit of rebound insanity. But the argument he'd had with John, and its cathartic resolution, had settled something in him that he was just now realizing had been restless for a very long time.

For all his conversation with Marina about the human capacity for emotion confounding the Espheni, he'd started to wonder over the last year or so if love was more an impediment in the war than it was an edge. It had felt as though with every loss the Second Mass had suffered he'd lost pieces of himself as well. But far from clouding his thinking, solidifying his relationship with John seemed to have given him back some of those pieces instead.

Maybe his kids should have been enough; maybe his relationship with Anne should have been enough; maybe his friendship with Dan, even; but what was left of him after Rebecca's death had been fracturing under the strain at least since he'd been elected. Maybe even since his return from Karen's grasp the first time, carrying an eyebug back to the Second Massachusetts — or since he'd run into Harris, back in Acton, and realized that his so-called friend had left his wife to die. Some part of him had been slowly, quietly bleeding all that time, sapping his strength and gradually turning determination to desperation.

He slowed, waving to the sentry at the far end of the bridge, then headed across, tires bumping over the handbuilt wooden deck. Had it really been so long since he'd felt hope for himself, beneath the front he put up for everyone else? Because despite everything — that seemed to be what he'd found with John, the ground firming under his emotional feet at long last.

The famous Archimedes quote flitted through his mind at the thought: Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world. Well; if he'd found his place to stand, all he needed now was the lever. The Dorniya might help with that — if they were what they pretended to be. Time would tell.

"Home sweet home," John murmured as they crossed the long span into the city, interrupting Tom's thoughts with a hand sliding down from his waist to bracket his thigh, thumb brushing over the inner seam of his jeans. "'Bout time. It's been a long couple of weeks, if you know what I mean."

Exhaustion and the chill of the nighttime air had muted most of the nerves that should have tingled under the touch; a good thing, since he might have embarrassed himself otherwise. "Food, shower, and sleep first, maybe even in that order," Tom replied dryly, casting a raised eyebrow back over his shoulder in John's direction. "And medical attention for you; you're not getting out of facing the music that easily."

"You do know that endorphins are the body's natural painkillers, right?" John drawled.

"You do realize that I haven't slept or eaten a full meal in ... ugh, don't even ask me to count the hours," Tom countered, stifling a yawn. "And that Anne's likely to come track you down herself if you don't show up?"

John sighed, torso shifting against Tom's back as he moved his hand back to a slightly less suggestive position. "And of course you'll have meetings to get to this evening. Mister President."

"It's like you actually knew who I was before you got involved with me," Tom said lightly, feigning astonishment.

"Yeah, a pain in my ass," John replied, in fond, warm tones.

---

About that time, they passed the next line of the defenses, rolling slowly in over gritty asphalt with Hal and Maggie just behind them, Lyle and Dingaan bringing up the rear. They'd changed the order of procession at the last gas stop, after a furious whispered discussion between Maggie and John that Tom had deliberately kept out of; both of them had finished the argument looking a combination of aggravated and smug, though the most interesting thing about it as far as Tom was concerned wasn't the fight itself, but the tolerant raised eyebrow Hal had given the spectacle. Something he'd have to ask about later. In the here and now, though, every soldier who laid eyes on them exclaimed and either pointed or turned to their friends, calling Tom's name or his title.

"Was it like this for you? After Fitchburg, and with the folks at the Nest?" Tom murmured, waving to the crowd in general acknowledgement. There weren't too many of them at that early hour, at least; and he didn't see anyone he knew very closely, either. With any luck, that meant the kids — and the rest of the command team who'd stayed behind — were still asleep; he was tired enough that he'd been afraid he'd fall asleep on the bike the last few miles, never mind trying to hold an important conversation.

"Sort of? I mean, with a little more scandal to it — I was always more the bad boy than the knight in shining armor," John shrugged. "More notoriety, less responsibility. Which is pretty much how I wanted it."

"I'd give it all up for peace — I would, if we were at peace," Tom said wistfully, then shook his head. He already had the responsibility, though; ditching it without anyone prepared to pick it up would do no one any good, and be a purely selfish move on his part. And for all John said he didn't want responsibility of his own, he seemed to have far fewer qualms helping Tom bear up under his. "But for the time being, like you said ... ah, good, Dan's still here."

The railyard was bustling with activity as they rolled in, noisy with fresh First Continental soldiers squaring all the weapons and supplies away, the last of the refugees disembarking to stand in line to talk to one of Jeanne's public works volunteers, and Colonel Weaver yelling orders at a mixed group of engineers and Berserkers decoupling the modified flat car carrying the grid gun from the rest of the train. Dan looked up as they rolled in, and his whole body seemed to relax as he recognized them.

"Tom!" Dan called, striding away from the train as they pulled the bikes to a halt. He had to be at least as exhausted as they were, but there was no hint of it in his energetic pace. Tom threw the kickstand, then dismounted, pausing only to make sure John was steady on his feet before stepping into a backslapping hug.

"It's good to see ya," Dan said tightly as they pulled back from the hug, studying Tom closely. "You all right?"

"Except for getting kidnapped in the first place, much better than I had any right to expect, actually," Tom smiled tiredly at him, returning the evaluation. It looked like one shoulder had been bandaged since Tom had last seen him, but it wasn't impeding Dan's range of motion any; otherwise, he seemed tired but in decent spirits. "I'll have a lot to report; later, though, after we all get some rest and refreshment. When are you holding the debrief for the mission?"

"Afternoon; fifteen hundred or so. You sure you want to be there? Everyone would understand if you needed a day or two more." Dan glanced to John, then the others, as if testing Tom's true mood by their reactions; annoying, though understandable, considering how wrecked he'd been the last time the Espheni had taken him.

"I'm sure," Tom nodded, firmly. "They tried to reason with me this time, rather than going straight for the torture; they gave me a 48-hour ultimatum. But I'm fine; I escaped before they came back to enforce it."

"Well, if you're sure," Dan gave him a skeptical look, then clapped him on the arm again and grinned. "A few months the first time, a few weeks the second, a few days the third ... if nothing else gave me hope we'll eventually take these bastards down, that would. Welcome home, Tom."

"Good to be home, Dan," Tom replied, nodding to him. Then he glanced back toward the train. "Anything I need to know before I crash for a few hours?"

"Final count's still coming in, but it looks like we'll have at least a few hundred new provisional residents; most of 'em so far are opting to stay and earn their citizenship," Dan replied. "As for ours, we did have a few casualties. No fatalities among the Second Mass this time, though, and not bad at all considering the damage we did in return. I'll have a full accounting at the debriefing, and family notification letters; wasn't looking forward to signing those myself. Oh, and Ben's still out of the city — he said he'd be traveling back with the rebel Skitters — but he was fine last I saw him, and he sent Denny with us. She'll answer any questions we have on that front, if the rest aren't back before we meet."

"Good to know," Tom said, nodding. "And the 14th Virginia — John said you brought most of them with you? How'd they perform?"

"They're eager to find Hathaway, but willing enough to follow the chain of command in the meantime," Dan shrugged. "We'll have to discuss the timeline for that at the meeting, too; you said he wasn't in Greensboro?"

"No," Tom shook his head, "nor any of his soldiers that I could tell. Most of the people had been there since the start, or were brought in as individual stragglers like Dingaan and I. Richmond would be my guess for where they took him; Dingaan didn't remember seeing him there, but he also escaped around the time the Keystone captives should have arrived, so they might not have overlapped. They'll probably be expecting us to attack there next anyway, if Hathaway was approached like I was. But — I'm sure we'll cover that in more detail at the meeting."

"Right, right." Dan agreed, absent-mindedly, as he glanced back toward the continuing work at the train. "Hey! Eyes on the job! Sooner you get it done, sooner we all get to bed, so get a move-on, soldiers!" he yelled, glaring at the distracted troops.

"Which, by the way," Tom said, turning back to wave Dingaan forward to the group. "Dan, this is Dingaan Botha; Dingaan, Colonel Dan Weaver. I'll be inviting Dingaan to the meeting, both because he has first-hand intel on the Espheni prison camps, and because he's an electrical lineman; he has some news you'll definitely want to hear."

"Nice to meet you, Dingaan," Dan replied with a distracted nod, shaking the other man's hand.

"Likewise, Colonel," Dingaan replied.

"But if the pair of you don't mind, I'd like to find a cot sometime before noon myself," Dan continued.

"Go on, go on; we'll see you again later," Tom replied, then turned and began ushering the rest toward the nearest entry to the underground mall. "C'mon, guys; just a few more minutes."

No one objected; they all fell in, trailing him like a flock of exhausted goslings, leaving the bikes behind in the railyard. Hal and Maggie would probably go straight to their room, not too far from his; they were leaning on each other as they walked, chuckling almost drunkenly from fatigue. John had picked up a stick somewhere as a substitute cane, and was trailing at Tom's heels; he apparently had no desire to sleep alone, even with endorphins off the table, which was good because Tom didn't, either. As for Lyle, Tom wouldn't be surprised if he meant to supplement the guard that morning; the Berserkers still did that occasionally, for he or John or both. And Dingaan would no doubt find a place to crash in the guest VIP quarters, at least until they had time to talk to Dr. Kadar.

It took longer than Tom would have liked to reach their destination, though; as more people flooded out to greet the day, it seemed like every other person they passed wanted to shake hands with him and express their faith in him and relief that he was back in one piece, and he couldn't just brush them off. He pasted on the most earnest smile he could and thanked each one, moving on as quickly as they would allow, and by the time he'd reached the corridor leading to his room all of the others but John had gone on ahead, drifting off to other destinations. Even the usual sentry outside the President's quarters was nowhere to be seen, though that would probably change the moment word of his return filtered down through the correct channels.

A wave of fatigue swept over him as he stopped outside the glass doors, thinking of all the tasks he really should complete before stepping inside and pulling back the covers. It was extremely tempting to just forget all that, to just walk in and lie down in all his dirty, dusty, hungry and dehydrated state. He sighed, glancing over at John, and surprised another soft, fond look on the other man's face. John reached out to feather his fingers through Tom's hair, and it was all Tom could do not to turn his face into that hand and close his eyes with a groan.

"Look at you," John tsk'ed. "I'm the one who just fought a battle and traveled several hundred miles on a lame leg to bring you home, but you look about as bushed as I feel. Why don't you go on and take your shower, clean up and come right back? I sent Lyle to the kitchens for something light; soup, eggs, whatever they got at this hour. It should be here by the time you're done. I'll go by the infirmary, get cleaned up myself, then join you."

"Sounds like heaven," Tom admitted roughly.

"If I see Matt and Lexie while I'm out, I'll let 'em know you're here, and that you'll see 'em at lunch," John promised, drawing an X over his chest and thereby proving he'd spent entirely too much time around teenagers of late. Then he stifled a yawn. "Or ask Tanya to do it; if I don't see them, I'm pretty sure I'll run into her."

"Don't take too long," Tom replied. "Quicker you're back, quicker we can sleep."

"Quicker I can sleep. If I'm not back by the time you're done eating, don't stay up on my account," John shook his head. "If I ran away at this stage of the game, I think even Lyle would hunt me down and carry me back to you, caveman style."

"That wasn't what I ...." Tom's jaw cracked wide in another yawn; then he chuckled, amused by the image despite the misunderstanding. "You know what, never mind." He tangled a hand up in the front of John's shirts and tugged him gently in for a kiss, just a bare brush of mouth against mouth.

It was an oddly tender kiss; perhaps the first one they'd shared that hadn't been instigated by either passion or adrenaline, just simple attachment. A quiet admission of caring. The couple of inches of height he had on John normally didn't matter much, but Tom felt them now as John relaxed into him, tension bleeding out of his posture. As the former academic of the pair, regardless of their actual positions in the group's shifting hierarchy, Tom had far more often been cast as the vulnerable one between them in past encounters, both negative and positive — and the Espheni's fascination with him hadn't helped with that. It was nice to be the one leaned against for a change, rather than the one doing the leaning. His lips curved against John's at the irony of the thought.

"We're going about this all out of order," he teased as they pulled apart again. "Isn't breakfast in bed supposed to come after the knight in dusty leathers ravishes the self-rescuing damsel?"

"Shit, I only wish I was up to some ravishing," John replied, surprised into a chuckle. Then his gaze turned thoughtful. "You're pretty good at kicking me in the ass when I need it too, you know."

The reference to the conversation the night before brought back another pithy comment, from a much earlier stage of their relationship, and Tom grinned at the reminder. "Quid pro quo, remember?"

John chuckled again, then kissed him one more time, briefly but with more intent; a promise, this time, rather than an admission. "Yeah, you just hold onto that thought."

---

Tom was sure there had been times when he'd done more, under more stressful conditions, on less sleep than he'd had in the last few days, both before and after arriving in Charleston. But at the moment, he was having a hard time bringing any of them to mind. The trip to the admin-level shower room and back — an area once intended as a mall employee locker room, fortunately already plumbed before the invasion — had sapped most of the energy he had left; by the time he'd donned clean clothes and accepted a plate of toast and glass of juice from Lyle, it was all he could do just to finish the simple meal.

Though the taste was definitely worth the effort. Apparently, John's stint in the kitchens had been productive in more ways than just as a distraction. Tom wondered how many people who'd eaten in the cafeteria that day had any idea where the fresh, delicious bread had come from; John's cooking skills had been the most widely-praised of the talents that had earned him a place in the Second Mass, but it had been well over a year since he'd formed the Berserkers and helped crack the siege of Fitchburg, and he'd never taken up the chef's hat again since. It was a shame, since he was really good at it, much better than Tom's limited Sunday morning breakfast-making skills. Tom thought he might have to try coaxing the man to cook just for the immediate family more often.

He smiled up at the ceiling at that thought — family — and set the plate down on his bedside endtable. He didn't really want to miss John's return, but it would take a pair of cranes to keep his eyelids up at the moment; he laid down atop the covers, dragging one of the pillows over for a headrest, and relaxed, letting his thoughts drift.

He didn't notice when he crossed the line from drowsing awareness to full sleep, though he knew it must have happened by the change in the quality of light around him. The dim, artificial illumination from the standing lamp in the corner suddenly became the brightness of spring sunshine, angling through the wide white window over the dining table, bringing a glow to the yellow walls of the kitchen in the house in Boston. Tom was dressed for a long day of teaching, standing by the coffee maker, and he had a half-full mug in one hand; Rebecca was there too, standing at the sink with a drying towel clasped in her hands and brows drawn together in disappointment.

Tom couldn't help it; his breath caught at the sight of her, and he wondered again what perverse impulse had first inspired the Dorniya to use her form for these meetings. Was it actually necessary for them to use emotionally resonant imagery to facilitate contact, or was it just that it was convenient, and they were indifferent to the turmoil it put him through? Either way, he was already tired of it.

"All right, hit me with it," he goaded her, then deliberately took a long draught of the coffee. Was he literally drinking his memories here, or was the Dorniya's mental landscape simply filling in the blank from his expectations? Not that a difference that made no difference was really worth differentiating ... and it had been a long, long time since he'd had a really good cup of joe. Might as well get some use out of the experience.

"You know how disappointed he gets when you don't show up," his long-dead wife said, shaking her head at him. "Are you sure you can't clear your schedule?"

For a long moment, Tom had trouble making sense of that comment; who was 'he' supposed to be in this context? But then he recognized his own reaction to the words, nonsensical or not, and enlightenment teased at the edges of his thoughts. Emotionally resonant words to go with emotionally resonant imagery, perhaps?

Tom frowned, lowering the mug as he remembered what Lexie had said about her perception of light, and the further evidence of her abilities John had reported. Maybe that was the common thread that tied things together. He couldn't recall, just from the words, whether the snip of conversation Rebecca's double was apparently repeating might refer to one of Matt's concerts, one of Ben's academic competitions, or one of Hal's lacrosse games, but the details didn't matter to the familiar, resigned guilt that the comment provoked. If the Dorniya were used to sensing resonances, both physical and otherwise, and manipulating them for effect, then ....

If he knew reaction what they were after, then it was a short trip to 'why'; translating from a heavily metaphoric use of language to a more literal one. Tom raised an eyebrow at the Dorniya avatar and made an educated guess.

"You wanted me to be the one to act on the information about the moon, didn't you. You wanted me to go up there and destroy the power station myself — not as some reluctant plan B, but as plan A. Why, when the Volm are so much better positioned to take care of it?"

A look of consternation spread across the false Rebecca's face — and then her image flickered, replaced by a sleek, eight-limbed, visually sexless, and utterly alien figure. He could see the similarity of its basic structure to the Skitters, but at the same time, the being seemed considerably more graceful; its skin was smoother and paler, and its eyes much larger and more open in appearance. It probably said a great deal about ingrained cultural prejudices that he found this form less inherently repugnant; if he hadn't been thinking clearly, if he hadn't known about the DNA modification, he might have taken it for granted that it was naturally more benevolent than the Espheni.

A heartbeat later Rebecca's form snapped back into place, giving him a piercing, intent stare that seemed much clearer, somehow, than the rest of the memory-based world they were inhabiting.

"You catch on quickly, once you know what to look for," she said, a curve at the corner of her mouth so very like Rebecca's wry smile. "Much more quickly than we were expecting. But it takes more energy to communicate directly than it does to nudge old memories; energy the Espheni can sense and interfere with."

Tom vaguely remembered one of the spiked kids mentioning that a sufficiently powerful Espheni could detect and control a Skitter from up to five miles away; less than that for children still new to the harness, and still less for a Skitter trying to control one of those children themselves, but it all operated over the same 'shadow plane'. It made sense that the Dorniya's own long-range abilities would be detectable, given the murky tangle of the two races' history. If that was true, though, then why was it breaking cover to acknowledge him?

"But it just so happens that the nearest Overlords are all busy this morning," he mused aloud, tilting his head as he answered the question for himself. "Because of what we did in Charlotte."

"Because of you," Rebecca corrected him, smile turning bittersweet. "When acquiring other forms of life, we determine their value to the Dorniya and utilize them accordingly; our child did as he was tasked, and chose better than we could have imagined. But in doing so, he also tied our fate to yours."

He swallowed hard, fighting nausea at the implications — both the cold calculation that had put him in the role, and the added responsibility he hadn't asked for and still didn't quite understand. "But what does that mean?" he demanded.

Her gaze slipped past him, to fix on the kitchen doorway somewhere behind him, a frown gathering between her brows — and then the world seemed to shake, and suddenly he was back in Charleston again, the transition as abrupt as the cut of a knife.

"Hush," a voice was saying somewhere nearby — someone decidedly not Rebecca. Vaguely, he could feel a presence at his back, and a tugging sensation pulling at the fabric beneath him, but more than that was beyond him; he felt as though every inch of him, including his brain, had been wrapped in cotton wool.

"John ...?" he murmured, not bothering to open his eyes.

"Just pulling back the covers; everything's fine. Go back to sleep," the warm, raspy voice at his back replied.

The tugging sensation stopped; the bed dipped, and a warm, heavy arm slung itself over his midsection, just below the band of bruising. Something in Tom relaxed instinctively at the contact; he shifted carefully for comfort's sake, then let go, sinking back into the dreamscape.

Rebecca was waiting again when he arrived, though the spark of intensity had faded from her expression. Now that he knew to look for it, he could see the difference; maybe she'd figured the risk of keeping it up was too high, or somehow detected an Espheni presence nearby. But then why pull him back at all? How the hell did they intend to communicate anything meaningful to him if they had to avoid directly answering any of his questions?

Metaphor, symbolism; resonance. What was he supposed to do, try to trigger specific memories to get across the concepts he wanted? And was it only the Dorniya's actions that were at risk of attracting Espheni attention, or did it include the questions he was asking as well? He shook his head in frustration.

"Honey?" Rebecca's brows knit in concern. "What's wrong?"

"Utilize is an interesting word to choose," he replied, thinking his way through it aloud. "It implies action; that you want me to do something on your behalf. You obviously have a ship somewhere nearby, but rather than performing whatever action needs to be taken yourselves, you're working through a more primitive avatar. One that's taken you a long time to find. Ergo, it's both vitally important, and you can't do it yourself. Now, Cochise told me that the only way any Dorniya might have escaped the destruction of their world unaltered was if they hadn't been there when the invasion fleet arrived. It isn't that you weren't there, though, is it? It's that you were changed; that you deliberately did unto yourselves before they could do unto you. The thing is, putting you out of reach of them also put them out of reach of you."

Rebecca set down the drying towel and approached, slowly lifting one hand to touch his face. "You are the love of my life, Tom Mason," she said, and he caught his breath again sharply as he recognized the conversation she was invoking. It wasn't one he would forget easily; it had happened after the invasion, when they had realized, among other things, that if her cancer ever came out of remission a second time that they wouldn't have any way of successfully treating it again. "The father of my beautiful boys; my faithful and adoring husband. I love everything about you, about our life together. I cherish every memory, every heated word, every murmur of affection between us."

"You aren't her," he whispered hoarsely, tears pricking at his eyes. "You aren't her. Why remind me of this?"

"...But you're also stubborn, quicker to trust your own judgment than rely on others, and have a tendency to think you need to know everything," she continued, shaking her head at him. A snippet from a completely different conversation, much earlier in their relationship, though one with just as much emotion behind it.

Tom tightened his jaw. "You're saying I should shut up and focus on the task to be done," he said, irritated at the manipulation. "That I don't need to know the details of saving my own world. I'm sorry, but that's not acceptable. I'm not going to just fly up there and put myself in your hands, not knowing what you plan to do with me; and I'm not going to just blindly follow along with your instructions, either. Do you even have a specific endgame in mind? One that prioritizes not only the survival of the human race, but its freedom as well?"

Rebecca lowered her hand, brow still wrinkled in perturbation, and the dreamscape flickered around him; then he found himself seated at the dining table, mug of coffee at his lips again. His clothes were unchanged, but Rebecca was dressed much more casually, beaming at him over the rim of a cup of her favorite jasmine green tea. "You should have seen it, Tom," she said, brightly. "Hal made the winning goal tonight, and completely destroyed the other team's chances of advancing to the finals. They might actually make it themselves this year."

"Winning goal," Tom repeated, frowning intently as he dissected the reference. "You do have something in mind, then. Some kind of silver bullet, Hail Mary shot."

The dreamscape flickered again, other images and memories flashing before his mind's eye. A clip of Ben, standing out in a walled outdoor space, saying 'Espheni are tied to all the Skitters through this shadow plane.' A snapshot of the Skitter he'd been speaking for running away while Ben gasped in pain and fear: 'She comes, she comes.' A flash of his wife's stoic face after they'd found out her cancer was back when Matt was a toddler: 'I want to eradicate this so that it leaves me and never comes back'. And finally, the noticeboard at the school in Acton, centered on an article showing a picture of Espheni ships under the headline: "UNEXPLAINED BY SCIENCE."

It all added up to something, that was clear, but the sense of it all was still eluding him when he woke to a demanding knock on the door.

"Ugh. Stop the world, I want to get off," John muttered against his back, tightening the arm slung over him.

The probably-inadvertent double entendre — though one could never really be sure with John — surprised a chuckle out of Tom as he slowly stretched. Then he shifted toward the edge of the bed, slipping out of his partner's grip to rub the crustiness out of his eyes. "Tonight," he promised, then raised his voice toward the door. "Enter!"

The door cracked open a moment later and Lourdes slipped through, clutching a shoulderbag with an apologetic expression. "Sorry if I woke you, but since Pope showed up in the infirmary last night and you didn't, Anne thought you might want to get the inevitable post-kidnapping checkup done in private."

Tom folded the implications of the dream slash vision away to be dissected later and focused on the matter at hand. He managed a tired smile for her, rubbing absently at his sore ribs. "No, that's all right. I don't think there's anything to check except a little leftover soreness from that hornet — but better safe than sorry."

Lourdes smiled at him in relief and moved to set the bag down on the end of the bed, removing a few familiar implements — and one not so familiar, a Volm device of some kind about the size of a hardback book. He vaguely recognized it from the crate of goods Cochise had gifted to them. "I can even scan for eyebugs now without an X-Ray machine, thanks to this; Anne and Dr. Kadar figured out how to calibrate it using the residue of the parasites the rebel Skitters took out of me and Hal."

Tom had already been sure he didn't have one, but it would be good to have proof already available before someone inevitably brought the subject up. "That would be great, Lourdes. I put myself into your capable hands."

She glanced briefly in John's direction at the comment and blushed. He'd slept clothed as well, or else Tom would have responded to a visitor's knock with a request to wait, but the expression on his face as he sat up and leered at the spectacle of Tom removing his shirt made Tom want to blush, so he just grinned at the reaction.

"Speaking of capabilities," John said, clearing his throat as he carefully swung his feet over the edge of the bed and tested his sore ankle, "how's little sis?"

Lourdes' embarrassed smile grew more pleased at the comment. "Oh; better than before you left. Anne did yell a little when I told her what you'd said, but it got Alexis to leave her quarters for dinner last night, so she said she'd withhold judgment for now. Matt and Tanya sat with her, glaring at anybody that even looked like they might say something mean, not that there were many — there's been plenty of rumors, but not all that many people actually saw what she did, and up close she just looks like any other scared teenager with protective friends."

"Protective siblings," Tom corrected her gently, smiling at her. He hadn't missed the implication that she liked thinking of Alexis as a sibling, or Anne as a mother figure, or both; trust John to catch that. "You as much as any of the others; and I appreciate it, Lourdes. Never doubt that. We might have a very irregular sort of family — but we are family, and always will be, no matter what the Espheni might do to try and pull us apart."

"Lourdes Delgado Glass-Mason," John muttered under his breath, just loud enough for them to still hear.

Lourdes' hands never faltered in their tasks, but her face was fairly incandescent by now, and she ducked her head. "Thank you," she said softly, then cleared her throat. "So. No bugs. And as far as the ribs go — it looks like you were right; this is mostly just bruising, or at most light strains. You know the drill. Take some aspirin or ibuprofen for the pain and inflammation, apply ice when you get the chance, and try not to stress the ligaments too much; it'll take a couple of weeks to fully heal, but there should be no lasting damage. There's nothing else?"

"Just a few scratches from climbing the fence — which, yes, I do know the drill, but it couldn't be avoided. I'll let John go over those with the witch hazel. So what do you think? Do I pass muster?" He spread his arms carefully.

She rolled her eyes at him and began packing up her gear again. "Get something to eat before your meeting, both of you. It's almost two in the afternoon, but there's still some lunch laid out in the cafeteria; you aren't the only ones whose schedules are a little off today. And Pope; no forgetting the cane this time. Doctor's orders!" She gestured toward the somewhat battered walking aid propped up next to the door.

"Ma'am, yes ma'am," John drawled, casually saluting her; and oh, what a difference that was from the week after Keystone, when John had bristled like a stuck porcupine every time Lourdes so much as walked by Tom's cubicle. Another battle won against the Overlords; another to add to their tally of reasons to hope.

The Volm had turned out to be worryingly fallible, despite their advanced technology; Tom had no doubt the same would prove true of the Dorniya as well, no matter their advanced abilities and tragic backstory. He'd discuss the dreams and his conclusions with the others, and they'd use them to chart a course that would be best for all of their people. But whatever they might decide, he was determined to enjoy every moment he could steal with his family, including the one right there beside him.

He turned to John as Lourdes walked out, leaning across the bed for a lazy, appreciative kiss.

"What was that about?" John asked, cocking his head as Tom got up to get ready.

"I need a reason?" Tom replied with a teasing grin, then regretfully turned to the dresser and began picking out fresh clothes.

---

The homecoming mood continued through lunch. The children all crowded in as soon as word passed that Tom was up — probably Lourdes' doing — and he spent the first fifteen minutes just assuring all of them that he was well, introducing Dingaan when he turned up, and observing both the kids' reactions to each other and everyone else's reaction to the kids. Reassuringly, the mood didn't seem to be much warier toward Alexis than it had been around Ben when he'd first been deharnessed; definitely not ideal, but auguring well for future acceptance.

Though the victory in Charlotte was probably also a factor; it had been a huge boost for morale. There was a lot of backslapping and cheering among the other late lunchers as well, and not just for Tom's return, but for the victorious members of the Charlotte assault crew and the dazed-looking refugees who hadn't yet received an upside housing assignment as well. The looks on the newcomers' faces as they went through the food line would have lifted even the heaviest heart; Tom spent another fifteen minutes shaking hands before finally settling.

Dan, entertainingly enough, was already there, more bleary-eyed than he or John and seated very awkwardly between Marina and Captain Marshall. Once or twice, Tom thought he caught an amused, pointed look passing between the women in front of their uncomfortable object of interest; as different as they were, they seemed to have found common ground rather than reenacting the plot of a soap opera. Not that it was any of his business, but ... he'd be very interested to see how that fell out. Tom suspected Jeanne's input would be a significant factor.

"Anyway, Dad," Matt spoke up excitedly as he cleared the last of his plate. "I was looking for something to do last night, so I played with the radio some more; one of the scout groups found a news truck somewhere that could reach the few satellites that are still up. I couldn't find any broadcasts from Brazil — I guess the Volm didn't leave any radios there — but there's a camp in the middle of Arizona about half as big as Charleston! They say the Skitters don't like the desert at all. Which is weird, because there's also a bunch in Peru who say Beamers have been crisscrossing the Sechura Desert there and hanging around some place called Tiwanaku for weeks, out near where those geoglyph things are."

"The Nazca lines?" Tom frowned, startled.

"Didn't there used to be tall tales about aliens carving those things? Or natives carving them for aliens?" Hal put in, wandering over to the table with Maggie in tow and a small plate stacked with brownies in hand. Tom had seen someone behind the food line hand it to him with a pointing finger in Tom's direction; he suspected John's handiwork there again.

"More recent theories — at least, those in the most recent journals I read — speculated that they were made for their gods to see, and that the natives worked on them for several hundred years," Tom said, shrugging. "Up through somewhere around ... huh." He sat up straight, wincing briefly as his ribs complained, and rapidly calculated dates in his head.

"Can it possibly be that there's a historical fact you've forgotten, Professor?" John snarked.

"What? Uh; no, it's just ... 500 AD. Fifteen centuries ago. I've heard that before. There was something Cochise said recently — the Espheni have been conquering the galaxy for about that long. If they were here once before ...."

"Whoa," Matt said, eyes wide. "You mean it actually might be important?"

"It might fill in a piece of the story we've been missing," Tom nodded.

"Good job, pipsqueak. All those hours of listening to static finally paying off," Hal drawled, stretching a hand over the table to offer a high five.

Matt blushed, but happily smacked Hal's palm in return. "Thanks, Hal."

The cafeteria doors opened again, and Tom looked up, breaking into a smile at the sight of his missing son. Instead of heading for the food line, Ben scanned over all the diners inside, then echoed Tom's grin as he caught sight of his family.

"Dad! I could hardly believe it when Tector told me you might beat me back here," he exclaimed, hurrying across the crowded room and throwing his arms around Tom for a quick hug. Then he pulled back and casually punched Hal in the arm. "You jerk, you should have said something! I would have wanted to come with."

"Hey, you had your own stuff going on, and I didn't want to get your hopes up in case it took longer than we expected or Dad couldn't get out after all," Hal shrugged unapologetically.

"Whatever," Ben rolled his eyes, then plopped down at the table, snagging a brownie off the plate and biting into it with enthusiasm. Then his eyebrows went up, and he took an eager second bite. "Mmm, hey; s'good!"

"You're welcome," John smirked, then picked another up off the plate and offered it to Tom. "Here, take one."

It did look good; but he saw how few there were. "No; that's all right. I'm not that hungry, and I'm sure there's plenty of other people who'd appreciate it more than I would."

John snorted. "Of all the ridiculous ...." He cut himself off, waving a hand. "Take it anyway. If not because you don't want to hurt my feelings, then for the healing power of chocolate. I've seen the bruises, remember?"

Tanya, who'd been talking quietly with Lexie on the other side of John, laughed loudly at that and injected herself into the conversation. "Healing power? That's Harry Potter, Dad, not the real world."

Belatedly, Tom realized that Tanya was wearing John's Skitter-claw necklace, and wondered that he hadn't picked up on its absence the night before; her dad must have given it to her before the raid. That relationship had definitely come a long way in the last few weeks.

"Hey, who are you to question your old man, huh?" John teased, jostling her with an elbow. "These are my brownies; if I say they've got healing powers, then they damn well have healing powers."

"Amen to that, brother," Tector's voice announced out of nowhere; then an arm still clad in half-gloves and a jean jacket reached past them, snagging the brownie right out of John's hand. "Shouldn't you be hogging the plate to yourself though, in that case? Noticed you're still sportin' the snazzy new accessory." He gestured toward the cane propped against the table between John and Tanya.

"Too much talkin', not enough eatin'," Lyle put in, appearing next to Tector to snatch the brownie in turn. Interestingly, though, he broke it in half before sinking his teeth in ... passing the other half to a smirking blonde standing beside him. John's scavenger, Tom thought; he'd seen a glimpse of her on the bridge before he was taken. Good to see she was settling in already.

"Hey!" John exclaimed, affronted, glaring at the three of them as Tector good-naturedly shoved Lyle and then swiped another off the table. "That was Mason's brownie. Get your own!"

After all the painful memories stirred up by the Dorniya and their metaphoric conversations, it was almost a relief to be reminded of a better pre-war memory by the dessert-related banter; Tom broke into a chuckle and reached for one of the few left on the plate. "How about I get my own. Guess I better see what the big deal is."

It wasn't that he didn't expect it to taste good; everything John made was worth the effort it took to eat. But either he'd forgotten what brownies were supposed to taste like, or it was some sort of ur-brownie the likes of which the world would never see again; Tom's eyes fluttered briefly shut as he took his first bite and the rich sweetness rolled over his tongue. He didn't even know how long it had been since he'd had junk food that didn't come out of a stale three-year-old Hostess package; it was like biting into ambrosia.

"That is amazing," he said, nodding to John, who had a pleased glint in his eye. Then he glanced up at his eldest son. "Reminds me of the time — I don't know if you were old enough to remember this, Hal — when I made the mistake of telling your mother that there was just one thing that my mother had made better than her."

Virtually every adult in earshot groaned at that comment, and Tom laughed. "Yeah, exactly. It was brownies — and over the next several months, she collected every brownie recipe she could find and tried them out, one by one. Constantly refining and perfecting, trying to surpass what my mother had always done from scratch. I thought for sure she'd give up sooner or later — I mean, it was only one recipe."

"Yeah, like it was only one shipment of tea in the harbor, I bet," Maggie commented, wryly.

Hal gave a surprised grunt. "Hey, is that why I thought the word 'brownie' meant any kind of dessert, for the longest time? I have a vague memory of, like, an entire Summer of Chocolate."

"Sounds about right," Tom chuckled in return. "She baked pan after pan after pan, all different recipes, for months until she finally reached her goal. And she did reach her goal. Stubborn woman, your mother."

"I didn't know that," Ben spoke up, in wondering tones. "I mean — I knew she'd always bake her brownies when one of us had a bad day, or we were celebrating something, but I don't remember her ever saying why."

"I do. Kinda, I mean I've forgotten a lot of it, but ..." Matt said in a small voice, looking down at the table. He was prodding at the remnants of his lunch, a distant look on his face. "I asked her some question, something stupid about whether some girl would like me if I wasn't the coolest guy in class, or didn't know how to do something she was interested in, or whatever. So she told me about the brownies." He looked up at Tom then, a bright, shy smile pulling at the corners of his mouth. "It's a good memory."

"It is a good memory," Lexie said quietly, stretching a hand over the table to clasp Matt's. She bit her lip as everyone else turned to look at her as well, then took a breath and continued, meeting Tom's gaze. "I mean ... I know she wasn't my mother. But she's important to all the rest of you, and you never talk about her. If you ever want to, I ... I wouldn't mind hearing more."

She looked older than before, now that Tom had a good look at her; and not just because of the years the last growth spurt had added to her physical body, or the white streak threaded through the dark locks framing her face. She was maturing by leaps and bounds, spirit starting to catch up with her outward form. "Sure, Lexie," he replied, able to deny his daughter nothing. "Once things settle down a little ... I think maybe it is time I aired some of those old, good memories out. Uh, as long as it's all right with your mother?" he added, as he caught sight of Anne approaching, worry lines bracketing her eyes as she glanced between him and her daughter.

"As long as what's all right with me?" Anne asked, lifting her eyebrow as she stopped at the end of the table.

"Just ... telling her stories of our lives before the war?" Matt spoke up before Tom could come up with an answer.

She glanced at Tom again, a wariness in the look that told him she knew that wasn't all of it, but she didn't take it out on Matt; he'd noticed she was pretty good at that sort of silent signaling, now that he was actually paying attention to it. "I don't see why not," she said, smiling at the kids. "But not right now. It's almost three."

"Already?" Lexie said wistfully.

"I'm afraid so, sweetheart," Anne said. Then she tilted her chin at Matt. "You keeping us company in the infirmary today? You left your homework there when we all went out to the bridge, and Jordan dropped by this morning to add yesterday's assignments to the stack."

Matt glanced at Lexie and Tanya, biting his lip, then said, "Yeah, I suppose I should. Are you coming too, Tanya? We could fit in a few more chapters if you want."

Tanya grinned at him. "Eager to see if Hazel's rabbits make it out of Efrafa, huh?"

"If he isn't, I am," Lexie said, smiling at them both.

"Aren't we all," Tom murmured, watching fondly as the three kids got up, continuing to bicker as they took their plates and cups over to the dirty dish trays.

"I figured I'd keep an eye on them while the rest of you are in the meeting," Anne sighed, glancing between him and John. "I've still got a few serious patients from the raid last night, but Roger will be there too; he's helping me run more tests after what happened with Lexie at the bridge. You heard about that?"

"Yeah, John told me. She seems all right though?"

"So far," Anne shrugged, still looking worried. "Fill me in later?"

"Of course," Tom nodded solemnly.

Across the room, he saw Dan glance at the clock and stand up; Marina and Captain Marshall quickly followed.

"Guess that's our cue," John sighed, watching the trio make their way to the door. Then he swiped what was left of the brownies, wrapping them up in a napkin.

"Seriously?" Maggie commented dryly.

"Screw you, sister; like you didn't eat two before the mission. I baked the damn things, I can do what I want with the leftovers," John replied, loftily.

"Except in the case of the President requisitioning necessary resources ... and I'm afraid I'm going to have to do just that," Tom put in, grabbing them out of his hands. Like he was going to let that opportunity go to waste. Then he tucked the package away and picked up his dishware, smirking. "Shall we?"

John took a punch on the arm from Maggie in good humor, chuckling ruefully. "After you, Mr. President. Sir."

---

Tom was bemused to realize, as they worked their way through the debriefing, that it hadn't even occurred to anyone to bring up Section 4 of the Twenty-Fifth Constitutional Amendment to officially transfer power to Marina during his 'incapacitation'. That was probably a good thing, though; that was one precedent he wasn't exactly eager to set. The government had gone more than forty years without having to declare a president incapacitated without his prior agreement; that would be a hell of a first to add to his already-checkered legacy.

Without a full Congress or an appointed Supreme Court — only a few judges and lawyers had survived the obliteration of the eastern seaboard's major cities to make it to safety in Charleston — John had been right, the New United States government was still mostly 'a bunch of ceremonial bullshit pasted over martial law'. But one day that would no longer be the case, and people were going to start taking this kind of thing seriously again. Whoever ended up writing the story of this rebellion in future history books was going to have a lot of fun figuring out what to include and what to whitewash over as it was.

But despite everything that had happened in the last few weeks, Tom was hopeful, now, that those books would one day be written. And he didn't think he was borrowing on others' faith in saying that. However inadvertently, his people, Cochise, the Dorniya, and even the Espheni had each exposed enough fragments of truth that he'd finally begun to assemble a more complete picture of what was going on; and, more importantly, how the Espheni meant for it to end. And knowing that would be a very big step in figuring out how to stop them.

"So," he said, clearing his throat loudly as the official portion of the briefing wrapped up. He'd shared virtually everything, apart from the information about the Dorniya, including Dingaan's experiences and Cochise's comments about the school he'd seen; that in particular had caused a lot of consternation. "To summarize: we've had a very busy few days. We've learned a lot about our enemy's current strategy, including its weaknesses; and we've taken several hundred more of our people back from captivity, striking a blow and bolstering our own position at the same time. The problem is, that's still a drop in an ocean when you think about the sheer numbers of the enemy worldwide, and the much more advanced tech base they're working from."

"Yeah, but that's always been the case, since the first shot was fired in this war; and look how far we've come," Dan pointed out. "One battle at a time; and lately, we've been winning more than we've lost."

"Yeah, but it's not a question of ability or success rate," John drawled, steepling his fingers on the table. "It's a question of sheer fucking scale. Am I right?"

"Exactly," Tom nodded to him. "We can keep killing Skitters and hornets and disabling their tech — and they'll keep breeding increasingly disturbing bio-creations and building more killing machines. Even if we were able to get world-wide communications up and coordinate with these other resistance groups Matt's been listening in on — there's just too many of them. They're easier to defeat individually, but you won't catch one on its own anymore, and quantity has a quality all its own. Tell me something; when's the last time you spotted a Skitter wearing one of those uniform-type vests they all used to have? You can't, can you? That should tell you something about the investment they're putting into their foot soldiers now."

"Yeah, but why does any of that matter?" Hal commented, frowning. "Weren't you the one who said we don't have to kill them all, we just have to kill enough?"

Tom sighed, nodding to his son. "That's true. But I made that statement based on certain assumptions, among them that they value the lives of their soldiers, and that they could find what they came here for on any planet other than Earth. But no matter how many Skitters we kill, they just breed more, faster; and I've come to believe that their actual objective here is us."

"What do you mean by that?" Marina furrowed her brow.

"Specifically," Tom clarified, "our deaths. They don't intend to leave this world behind until they've either killed every last human being, or made us a part of their war machine."

There was a murmur around the room; then Marina braced her hands on the table and shook her head. "That's a hell of a statement, Tom. What proof do you have of this?"

"Bits and pieces," he shrugged. "I pulled it together from a lot of different sources, including Matt's latest radio report, just this afternoon. But taken all together, it's difficult to ignore the implications." He glanced around the room, then took a deep breath and began. "According to Cochise, the war between the Volm and the Espheni has been going on for several hundred years, since the Espheni drove them off their home planet. They weren't the first race the Espheni conquered, so they don't have any direct knowledge of what came before, but they've picked up a lot of information second hand on the other worlds they've visited. And what they've discovered is that the Espheni were always an exploratory, vicious race, but it wasn't until around fifteen hundred years ago that they became an all-consuming, conquering army. And in all that time, there is only one other planet that they're known to have scorched completely clean of life, like they tried to do here with the grid — the planet whose advanced biological sciences were co-opted to turn its entire surviving population into the first Skitters."

"That's ... interesting information, but I don't quite see how ..." Marina began to interrupt.

"Bear with me." Tom raised a hand, cutting her off as he continued. "Since then, they've obviously converted other populations into Skitters, and have discovered how to breed them as well. But a few of those first Skitters were still with the Espheni invasion force when it first came here. Red Eye — the Skitter who started the rebellion here — was one of them."

Ben cleared his throat then and spoke up. "It's true. He never said anything about it himself, but one of the others who served in the tower in Boston under Karen and her predecessor shared that information with us. That's probably why he was able to reject Espheni control, and help others do the same. And it's also why the rebellion never succeeded before they came to Earth. Both the Volm and the Skitters have said that no other race has fought back as hard as we do. This is the first time Red Eye's faction has had any hope of long-term survival."

"Unfortunately, the Espheni were already prepared for that to some degree," Tom continued. "That's why they spent so long observing us before they struck, and why they bombed so many of our cities and military bases before invading. And why, if you really think about the things they've done, it becomes apparent that they're doing far more than just trying to kill us off in the most expedient manner ... they're going out of their way to be cruel in the process. The reason for that, I believe, is that they've been here before."

"Those Nazca things in Peru," John frowned. "You said the natives made 'em for their gods to see, centuries ago. But we're talking guys with spears and arrows; what could they have done to piss off the fishheads that much?"

"Now that, I don't know," Tom shrugged. "Remember, though, that this was before they had Skitters; maybe even before mechs, since nothing like them shows up in the native artwork. All I know is that fifteen hundred years ago, the culture that made the Nazca lines stopped making more; and around the same time, the Espheni began conquering the known universe. And since they arrived on Earth, they've spent an inordinate amount of time doing otherwise inexplicable things like kidnapping a bunch of resistance leaders, offering to let them lead their people to reservations, then slaughtering them in the middle of a random field. Stealing children and enslaving them — either with a harness, or by brainwashing them via something out of the Hitler Youth playbook. Lecturing us about the fact that oppression is in our nature, before offering us choices that aren't really choices at all. Remember the Mega-mechs, as well — Cochise recognized them, and told us they were typically used against worlds more advanced than ours. But the main Espheni fleet left only a few days after it arrived, and none of those ships have been back since. That means everything they've fought with, they either brought with them, or built from scrap — and those mechs are made of a metal not found on Earth. So why did they bring them in the first place, if they were going to wait another two years to use them? They're toying with us. Killing time. Because — and this is more speculation, but I think it's founded — something, or someone, else is coming."

General Porter's mouth was a grim line. "Just like we thought the Skitters were the true enemy, until we got a glimpse of an Espheni. You think the Espheni came to conquer the place for some kind of ... Super-Overlord?"

She comes, she comes, the scientist Skitter had said; and so had the Dorniya, in echoing that memory. Somehow, Tom didn't think they'd been referring to her — the one impersonating Rebecca.

"I think the invasion fleet will be coming back, sooner rather than later. And when it does ... we might not like what it brings with it," he said, shrugging.

"So, what. Are we just supposed to give up?" Maggie objected, sounding angry. "I don't believe that. Least of all from you, after you just told us the plan for taking out the damn power plant on the moon. Maybe it'll only give us a breather for a little while — but we're not a few hundred underarmed civilians hiding in a school anymore."

Tom blew out a breath. "No, I'm not suggesting that. We might not be able to save everyone, but that just makes every life we do save, and every enemy combatant we kill that might have gone on to kill more of us, more important. I'm simply saying that, as with the Volm and the grid, we might have to accept outside assistance again if we hope to free our world from the Espheni within our lifetimes."

"You're talkin' about those Last Mothers. The ones that scientist Skitter mentioned. The last of the Doorknockers, or whatever you called 'em," Dan added, crossing his arms over his chest.

Tom nodded. He didn't intend to bring up the part about the changes to Alexis' DNA, let alone his, with anyone who didn't already know — that would just add unnecessary complications to what was already going to be a hard sell. But the rest of it had to be said.

"The question is, whether we want to risk whatever the cost will be for their assistance. It was worth it with the Volm, in the end; we got a lot of technology out of it, even if that wasn't their intention, and their bailing on us after the grid came down didn't leave us any worse off than we were already. But the Dorniya are a much bigger unknown. One of them managed to send me a message when I was a prisoner in Greensboro, and implied that they have some kind of silver bullet, Hail Mary attack in the works, to take out whatever's coming when it arrives. The Espheni are apparently all connected through something called the 'shadow plane', the means they use to contact one another over long distances; whatever the Dorniya intend to do, they intend to use that connection to affect the enemy all at once. But they need my help to do so, and they've been vague about the details."

There was a lot of murmuring at that, and several of the others threw side-eyed glances at John, as if expecting him to explode and voice their doubts for them. Tom hadn't been the only one relying on him for that in the past.

"So which is it?" John said, ignoring the others as he locked gazes with Tom, eyes dark and intent. "Embrace these new aliens, in the hopes of living a little longer; or tell 'em to find another patsy? A year ago, you would've already made that call, and only deigned to inform us as and when you felt it necessary."

"Well, a lot's changed in the last year," Tom replied with a wry half-smile and a significant pause. "...Primarily, of course, the fact that we no longer have a mole exposing our every plan to the enemy."

"Uh-huh." The corner of John's mouth curled up at that, responding eloquently to what Tom hadn't said.

"Wait, wait," Ben broke in, frowning heavily. "Back up. Before the disturbing flirting. You said the shadow plane? The connection that Denny and I — that our spikes, I mean — use to hook up to the rebel Skitters? The connection that the rebel Skitters themselves are hooked into permanently? How are the Dorniya going to avoid hurting us when they attack the Espheni?"

Tom's blood ran cold as he processed the implications, all thought of teasing John fled from his mind. He hadn't thought that far ahead yet, too focused on piecing the history together and trying to avoid repeating mistakes in the present to look at more than the broad strokes of potential consequences.

He shook his head. "Good question. As I said, they've been vague on the details; just feeling me out on the general concept. But I didn't want to make a decision — even on whether to press them for more — without broaching the subject with all of you, first. Personally," he sighed, glancing around the table, "the longer this war drags on, the more I do believe we'll need outside help to successfully take back our world; and taking advantage of the Dorniya's desire for vengeance seems like an opportunity it would be a mistake to let pass by. But after what happened with the Volm, I don't want to risk missing any loopholes or potential negative fallout, either. If any of the rest of you have concerns, speak up — don't wait for someone else to say something."

That got the conversation going again, halting at first but full of good questions. No one brought up Alexis, though there were a few questions directed at Tom as to why they'd chosen him — but after he reminded them about Red Eye, that subject was left to lie in favor of speculations that ran increasingly far afield. After several minutes of that, General Porter cleared his throat and stood, staring around until everyone quieted back down.

"All right. So far, the only thing we all seem to agree on is that we don't have enough information to agree on. Tom, if you'd be willing to gather more intel the next time they're in contact, and report back — to Ms. Peralta, Colonel Weaver and I at a minimum — we could revisit the question then?"

"And what if they want an answer right away?" John asked, skeptically.

"I tell them we don't make decisions that way," Tom shrugged. "Whatever they're waiting for isn't here yet, and as they say they can't act without our help ...."

"That gives us the whip hand; more than we had with Cochise's dad, at least. I vote yeah," Maggie nodded.

"Doesn't seem like we have much in the way of other options," John shrugged.

A chorus of agreement followed, some supportive and others reluctant as the question bounced around the table; but in the end, no one dissented.

"Sounds like I have my orders," Tom concluded. Then he glanced up at the clock, not surprised to see that several hours had passed. "I won't keep you any longer; I have other things to attend to, and I'm sure you all do as well. Don't hesitate to bring me any further questions or concerns, though; whatever the ultimate outcome, we are making a difference in this war, and we saved a lot of lives today. Gentlemen; ladies."

There were moments it was good to be President; this wasn't exactly one of them. But the warmth in John's expression as everyone parted ways to take care of necessary business was better than any public acclaim, in Tom's opinion.

He nodded back, then followed Dan and the promised paperwork to his office.

Looming threat or not, he wasn't just surviving anymore. As unbelievable as it might seem ... life did go on.

---

10. Keeping to the Green Path

"May there be no blame, obstacle, want, or misery; let no deceiver come behind or before them; may they neither be snared nor wounded, nor seduced, nor burned, nor diverted below the road or above it; may they neither fall over backward nor stumble; keep them on the Green Road, the Green Path."
— Popul Vuh, Part Five

 

The week immediately following the liberation of Charlotte was probably the most frustrating of John's life. He'd been angrier before, more dissatisfied and discontented, especially during the rougher stretches between the Second Mass' retreat from Boston and their settling in Charleston when it had felt like he was the only sane man left in the group, but for sheer hair-pulling value there was no comparison.

For one, the damn aliens wouldn't leave Tom alone. If it wasn't Cochise interrupting the only five minutes they'd managed to be awake and alone in the same place all day just so the bubblehead could report he'd sent a message to his daddy, it was the Dorniya beaming their messages straight into Tom's head. And not just when he was asleep, either; there was a look he got when he was seeing the ghost of his dead wife that John was learning to recognize, something pinched and stricken that sapped any joy in the moment right out of him. It wasn't even as if they justified the intrusion with good news, either; just more of the same cryptic bullshit as before. Which had led to Ben cornering Tom with a really awkward conversation about 'the good of the many'.

Yeah, like that was going to fucking happen. Personally, John wouldn't give a rat's ass if the rebel Skitters all went down with the rest of their disgusting species, but Tom was the type to get skittish — play on words absolutely intended — about the concept of genocide, and that wasn't even touching what it would do to him to sacrifice one of his own children. On behalf of everyone else who gave a damn about him, no thank you.

Which reminded him of something else that hadn't been happening: the fucking. And not because of any empty threat he might have made during their last argument about making Tom sleep on the couch, either; that had been long forgotten by the time they'd kissed and made up. John had bit the bullet, packed the rest of his shit up and hauled it underground, and even gave Lyle permission to take over the medbus so he could get out of the bachelor's quarters. And half the time, he and Mason barely even managed to get their boots off before they collapsed exhausted into bed.

So much for moving in being a big fucking deal; far as he could tell, all he'd done was trade his valued privacy for a shorter commute and an octopus-armed nighttime space heater.

There were a few bright spots, though. Though he'd be damned if he said as much to Mason.

Spending more time with Tanya, who smiled a little more at him every day, and laughingly refused to give him back his trophy necklace. Helping refit the grid gun to travel on a Caterpillar chassis; working on the BFG was enough to get any gun nut a little hot under the collar. And then there was the spectacle of Dr. Kadar and his slow, awkward pursuit of Anne Glass. Now that Tom's new buddy Dingaan was around to help keep the utilities going, and some chemist named Marty had been picked up with his kids by one of the patrols, the basement-dwelling scientist had a lot more time on his hands. He seemed content to spend most of it with Alexis and her mother, as John had hoped ... and Anne wasn't exactly trying to get away, either. It was revoltingly sweet, and cut down ninety percent on the lingering side-eyed glances she used to give Tom. Win, win in John's book.

Killing cooties, too: three days after they stole several hundred prisoners out from under the fishheads, a fresh wave of Skitters, mechs, and hornets made another strike at Charleston. With Marshall and Fisher's people there to help shore up the defensive line — several of which proved to be at least as accurate with a Beamer-killer as the Second Mass' human snipers, including Fisher herself — the attackers didn't get close enough to plant any more fence posts or fill any more occupied streets with rubble, but there was still plenty of slaughter to go around. John may have got his daughter back, but now that he no longer had to guess at his son's fate, never mind the losses he'd seen since… yeah, he doubted he'd ever get tired of taking those bastards out up close and personal.

Partying with the Berserkers afterward had been as sweet as ever, too. He might sleep under Popetown now rather than in their midst, but he still fought with 'em, bled with 'em, ragged on Lyle for going sweet on the woman who'd drugged him and stole Tector's horse, counted on 'em to look after the folks who mattered when he asked — and they returned that loyalty in full measure. Well, apart from the expected coarse jokes and ill-timed bets one could expect from such a motley bunch. The only time they'd ever really let him down had been in the middle of his snit with Tom, back when the man had strolled into camp after a three months' absence and sucked away all the authority John had managed to assemble in the meantime. And worse — he hadn't even needed to lift a finger to make it happen. No surprise which side they'd chosen, looking back, though it had burned like acid at the time.

If you can't beat 'em, join 'em; that had been Tom's tactic back then, and from a certain perspective, that was what John was doing now, down in the armory with Tom's eldest going over their gear for the next assault. How the wheel turned. Hathaway's folks had been pressing, and Mason had been worried about what the Espheni might have in mind for the man as well; given that they still didn't know when or if the Volm mothership could come back to take down the power plant, Porter and Weaver had greenlighted the trip north.

Though since the element of surprise was already lost, they'd be switching it up a little this time. They'd be taking a route that bypassed Greensboro and heading straight for Richmond, leaving the newly mobile BFG on home guard and taking some of the newly tested goodies from Cochise's treasure chest instead. Concussion ordnance capable of turning boulders to sand should sever those tethers easily enough.

He chuckled to himself, and Hal looked up from the next table over, where he was loading mech metal-jacketed bullets into clips for his own gear-out.

"Something funny?"

John shrugged. "Depends on your point of view, I suppose. It's just ... sometimes I wonder how the hell I ended up here. But then I figure, considering all the far more likely alternatives, better not tempt fate even asking the question. Your dad tells me I'm his counterbalance, you know; but he's been my fixed point since, God, probably the day we met. Took him long enough to get his head out of his ass, but it worked out for the best. We'd probably have torn each other apart, or killed each other eventually, if it had fallen out any different."

"I think you have that a little backward," Hal scoffed, a smirk turning up one corner of his mouth. Then he paused, eyeing John more seriously. "You know ... I've still got my eye on you, and it's gonna stay that way until I'm sure this really isn't just some elaborate long con, but I think I get it, now."

"You think so, huh?" John stared at the kid, surprised. Of Tom's three sons, Hal had been the one he'd fully expected to hold a grudge 'til doomsday; he certainly deserved it. "And what exactly do you think you get?"

Hal just shook his head. "I dunno. It's just ... we all saw it coming with Anne a mile away. We met her just before the group we were with got snapped up by the Second Mass — she was triaging a bunch of survivors in a park, they got attacked when we were nearby, and Dad stopped to help her evacuate her patients. They just latched onto each other after that and didn't really look at anyone else. But you better believe I had a skeptical eye on that, too; we'd just lost our Mom, she'd just lost her family, I wasn't down for putting up with some rebound relationship just because Dad thought we needed a female role model in our lives, you know?"

"So what changed your mind about her?" Because clearly, he had; every last one of the Mason kids had been as angry over Tom leaving Anne in the first place as they had been about him hooking up with John. Less for the littler ones, maybe; but even Matt had been a little squirrely until Tom made it clear he could still call Anne whatever he wanted.

Hal grinned at that, a sharp, dangerous smile that was probably part of why Maggie had gone for a younger guy like him in the first place. He might still be a dumbass teenager, but he had that carbon-steel edge under the surface that Tom had bequeathed to all his children to one degree or another. "Believe it or not? When we figured out the best plan to get Ben back would involve me sneaking into his group with Ricky's cut-off harness strapped to my back. She didn't know Ben; knew Matt more than she did me; hadn't ever fired a gun. But she said she wouldn't let me go in there without every possible advantage. So she grabbed a scalpel, stepped into the cage with the Skitter Dad had dragged back to the school, and stabbed it through the mouth like a total badass."

"She's the one that figured that move out, huh?" John raised his eyebrows. Good for her; he could be a little more magnanimous now that he knew she wasn't threatening his position. "So you figured she was more than just a temporary distraction for your dad."

Hal let that lie a second while he filled a backpack with the clips he'd just finished loading, then cast another sharp look at John. "You know, back in the winter of 1774 to 1775, before they'd even drafted the Declaration of Independence, a bunch of colonists broke into the British armory here in Charleston? They didn't really have any industry for making guns on this side of the ocean yet, but they already knew trouble was coming, and there were all these poorly guarded military facilities stocked to the brim with weapons and powder."

John had an idea where Hal was going with that, but considering the way the kid had opened the conversation, he was willing to humor him. "Gave up on Harry Potter anecdotes, huh? Or do I detect the historical obsessions of a certain Tom Mason in this particular lecture?" he snarked good-naturedly.

Hal chuckled. "Yeah, how'd you guess? He filled my ears on the subject for a while, back when I asked him what was really going through his head when he asked Doc Kadar to modify all those guns with Volm tech, before Jacksonville."

John remembered asking Tom the same thing himself; accusing him of stealing a whole damn armory for John. Remembered Tom's reaction to that, too.

"And did he satisfy your curiosity?" he had to ask.

Hal raised a pointed eyebrow at him, and smirked. "What do you think? But I'm not stupid, you know."

John cleared his throat gruffly, and looked back down at the weapons he'd been cleaning on autopilot. "Well, I think that's about enough on that topic, Junior. But for the record ... I've got no intention of going anywhere. Even if it does mean there's a real danger of the woman who killed my scumbag brother ending up my step-daughter-in-law. Can't wait to see her face the day that penny drops."

Now the kid was the one going a little red in the face, and it was John's turn to smirk; Hal seemed torn whether to react to the killer comment or the in-law one. Mason-baiting; still the sport that kept on giving.

"Hey, and that's enough on that topic," Hal sputtered. "No matter what happens with Dad, if you think I'm ever going to call you Dad, or anything like it, you've got another think coming."

John laughed. "Never crossed my mind. I'm not stupid either, kid."

"Exactly," Hal replied, shooting him another wry look.

Christ, getting the seal of approval from a nineteen-year-old. "All right, whatever; enough bonding time already."

Hal snickered, then shouldered his pack and turned to leave. He stopped at the door, though, looking back with a pensive expression. "Is Dad really doing okay? I know he's said the Dorniya are still being cryptic, and he's hoping tonight's action will distract the Espheni enough for them to risk a clearer connection ... but he seems ... I dunno. More tense than he's saying. Not as bad as right after you guys hiked back from the plane crash, but ... still."

John shook his head. Not a conversation he really wanted to have with Tom's offspring, when he was barely getting any private conversation with Tom himself. But maybe he could use the opening to head another problem off at the pass. "Talk to your brother about that one. When your dad gets on a 'sacrifice for the greater good' kick, it's one thing; but when one of his kids comes at him with it ...." He whistled between his teeth.

Hal's expression went blank and stiff at that. "Ben," he growled under his breath, making a fist at his side. Then he gave John an apologetic grimace. "Uh, thanks, but ...."

"Don't mention it. Really, don't," John waved him off.

...Then about choked, realizing what he'd just done. That had gone beyond intervention to make his own life easier, and straight into the dreaded co-parenting territory. And not for the pair that actually liked him, either. He sighed, shaking his head at himself, and went back to work.

---

They struck Richmond that night much the same way they'd struck Charlotte, but with the grid gun exchanged for the services of a sapper party sent out in a stealthed Jeep a few days before. The only sticky point on the trip up was when they bypassed Greensboro; they didn't want to have to fight a second army before they even reached their goal, and the tracks they were using were almost within sight of the green-fenced enclosure. They throttled it down, muffled the heat as best they could, doused the lights, and crept on by; they didn't figure the same trick would work on the way back, but the longer it took the Espheni to twig to their actual target, the better.

The planning paid off when they reached Richmond; the concussion grenades from Cochise's party box made an even nicer boom than they'd anticipated, knocking mechs down like ninepins and severing the tether like a charm. The lying-in-wait time also meant the bombers had had time to build a makeshift tree-based slingshot to aim one up into the circling ship's engines; they set it off at the same time they cut the power, a much more satisfactory set of pyrotechnics than the last any of them had seen in the city, when the Second Mass had stumbled into the middle of a death match between opposing squads of Skitters on their original trip south.

The ambush party waiting for them was caught a little off-guard when all the explosions went off at once, and with their overlord distracted by all the crashing and dying, plowing through the attacking mechs and Skitters was even easier than it had been the last time. With Weaver camped on top of Tom back home, playing topside commander for the retaliatory attack they were expecting, Captain Marshall was technically in command of the soldiers; but Cap had reassigned all the irregulars, including Hal and Ben's groups, back under John's authority. They had themselves a hell of a good time rolling in over the disoriented wardens.

But that was when they hit the first bad news of the night: there were a lot fewer people behind those fences than they'd been expecting. There were almost no adult men or women under thirty-five to be seen, which eliminated most of the people Marshall had been looking for; only the visibly crippled, the middle-aged and the old, and a handful of kids too young to feed themselves were left to come out of hiding at the megaphone's call. And just as they were starting to get those loaded, the second piece of bad news arrived.

If John had doubted Tom's assertion that the Espheni were deliberately dicking them around, that night's events would have put paid to it. He didn't know what the fuck the tall, skinny aliens had done to Hathaway, but the man that had walked up holding the hand of a harnessed kid with a fresh wave of escorting mechs and Skitters behind him sounded like a wind-up doll, not the former leader of the free world. It was creepier than even what they had done to Karen.

The Earth was a gift, and they must protect it with their Espheni brothers? Yeah, he was calling a flag on that play. Though the sad part was, there were probably people out there who wouldn't even need the brainwashing to agree; ivory tower ninnies who'd never had to live in the real world before the fishheads broke it. Thank fuck Tom had never been that sort of professor.

It would probably be a kindness to put a bullet through Hathaway's skull. But John knew better than to expect Marshall not to shoot him in turn — or Tom not to be disappointed, later. Good thing he still had his Volm pistol, and knew how to switch it to stun. He opened fire in the middle of the man's speech, then returned the weapon to burn 'em down mode and picked off the nearest enemy Skitter over the sound of Marshall's angry yells.

They lost three of hers and six of his in the ensuing firefight, and a whole cluster of refugees when the mechs started deliberately targeting helpless civilians rather than fighters. And they were still occupied with taking the last of that group down when the third piece of bad news came winging in, the Beamer response time much quicker than it had been at Charlotte.

"SNIPERS!" John called out over the din, the minute the scout reported back over a crackly short-distance walkie-talkie. They'd been expecting to have to fend off fliers, but not that quick; everyone was still busy with the refugees. "Snipers, incoming to the west!"

Denny wasn't with them that night — she was playing D with Weaver's bunch — but Ben, Tector, Ox and Hal all ran for the heavy weapons. Hal's experience was more with a mounted .50 cal, but he could brace and aim well enough, and those four were the closest; John took up one of the anti-aircraft guns as well, skidding into position just in time to lift it and brace against a broken wall, wincing against a faint twinge from his still-healing ankle.

"We can't let any of them report which direction we're going after this!" he heard Marshall calling; good, she'd got her crew in gear, too.

"Don't let 'em get any shots off either!" he called; and then they were on 'em, half a dozen glowing winged shapes stooping in like a swarm of oversized, blue-assed fireflies.

They didn't have time to carefully aim; they just poured fire into the sky until every last one of the craft was raining down in pieces somewhere on the far side of the tracks. It was a good thing there weren't as many people to get out of the city as they'd been expecting, or they'd definitely have lost some to the shrapnel.

He limped over to Marshall after the last one fell, holding both hands up in apology. "Time to make a decision, Lady Cap."

He let her land the first punch, then wiped the blood away from his split lip and caught the next wild fist. "Easy, easy now. He's all right, not that I know what you expect to do with him; you really think people are gonna follow a guy preaching brotherhood with the Overlords? One of your guys should —"

"He's alive! The President's alive!" he heard Lieutenant Shelton calling from behind him, and winced.

"...Yeah, be figuring that out right about now."

Marshall wrested her fist free, then wiped sweat away from her forehead with the back of one blood-streaked hand. "Don't call me Lady Cap," she replied, heatedly. "And don't you ever aim a weapon at the President again!"

"Got him out of the line of fire, didn't it?" he shrugged, not wanting to restart the 'not my President' argument again, and jerked his chin toward the train. "And like I said — time to make a decision. We taking the option to hit Greensboro on the way back, or not?"

She scowled at him, staring at him for a long moment while she wrestled her temper under control, then sighed and shook her head. "Dan said you were an argumentative son-of-a-bitch, but that you usually had a point. Suppose I've seen that for myself, though I don't think much of your methods. What do you recommend?"

"I'd say hit 'em," he shrugged, "but that'd put the refugees we just picked up in harm's way. And in a week or so, these fences might all come right down anyway, if the Volm hold up their end of the deal. We had a specific goal here, with Hathaway; I'd hate to lose more of our own to no real purpose."

Her lips thinned as she thought that over; then she nodded, regretfully. "Full speed back to Charleston, then. And God help the people of Greensboro. Maybe they'll leave them alone, if they don't think we want them."

That was wishful thinking, John was sure; but let her have her delusions. He gave her a sloppy, casual salute, then turned back to yell to his guys — who seemed to be shepherding a crotchety old lunatic with what looked like half an apartment's worth of junk in tow. What the hell? "Get your asses in gear, people! THIS AIN'T AMERICAN PICKERS, YOU WANT TO SAVE YOUR LIFE OR YOU WANT TO SAVE YOUR ARMOIRE?"

He got a few raised middle fingers for his efforts, but it did light a fire under 'em; he might not have Weaver's or even Mason's leadership style, but it got the job done.

Well, one part of it, at least. The risk of a neutron strike on the train was no joke, and there was no guarantee the fishheads wouldn't finally clue in and bomb the tracks before they could make it back home. He didn't even want to think about trying to move so many people in vehicles salvaged on the fly with only what aging diesel they could salvage from the train. And with the fate of Schrödinger's President still uncertain, if in a different way than before, the command structure in Charleston was still in question as far as Marshall's people were concerned.

Still. Another battle won, another victory to bring home to lay at Tom's feet. No dead mice or floral bouquets for John Pope, no sir. Now if only he could think of a way to take advantage of the Dorniya's interference without doing something that would either leave them indentured to yet another alien overlord for the rest of their lives, or result in Tom Mason tearing himself apart afterward ....

Well, there'd be time enough to worry about that when they were all home again. John fingered the comm in his pocket, then regretfully let it go. Unfortunately, giving Greensboro a pass meant holding EMCON on the return trip to keep their signal footprint low; neither side would break it unless the situation was dire. Hopefully, the current silence meant that whatever had come at Charleston that night hadn't proven too hot to handle.

An idea glimmered in the back of John's mind at that thought; a quote he'd seen somewhere recently about communication. Gongs and drums, banners and flags — hadn't that been from the book he'd borrowed off Tom's shelves? He'd have to remember to bring it up to him. Later.

He holstered the Volm pistol again and took up a long rifle as the next wave of Beamers came into view, threatening the last stragglers streaming into the train. "INCOMING!"

One more day after the apocalypse. Saving the planet, one dead alien at a time.

---

They ended up fending off four more Beamer attacks before cruising down out of the Piedmont onto the coastal plain; two from the west, one from the northeast, and one — the last, and least numerous of them — from the south. Fleeing from Charleston, John figured when he saw the obvious damage on two of the three craft. The second flight had got close enough to fire on the train and damage one of the cars stuffed with refugees, but this one didn't; Ben and Tector, the current snipers on shift, managed to knock all three down in short order.

The city, he soon saw as they got closer, hadn't gotten off so lightly. A rock formed in his throat as he saw the wreck of the main bridge creating a new shoal in the Ashley River — dropped by the defenders, if he had to guess — and several plumes of smoke rising from newly shattered buildings. The rail bridge was still intact, and the sentry posts looked manned, but the city had obviously seen a heavy pounding. The wreckage of several Beamers smoked here and there amid the fresh debris. And perhaps most telling, when they pulled into the rail sheds at last, the BFG was missing ... and so was his President.

Peralta was the one there to greet them, in fact, arm in a sling and a butterfly bandage on her brow. John clenched his jaw as he jumped down from the train, staring at her in consternation.

The VP gave him a wan smile as she glanced down the length of the train, assessing the damage they'd picked up and the number of obviously occupied cars. "Mr. Pope. Captain Marshall," she said, nodding to the uniformed woman as she stepped down after John. "Was your mission successful?"

"More or less," John replied, gruffly. "I see you had the expected trouble here?"

Behind them, the refugees began to disembark; Marshall turned to bark a quick order to her lieutenants and the waiting guards, and the usual orderly dance of mission aftermath began, just a little more slowly than usual.

Peralta nodded, tightly. "You were right; they planned for being hit again, anticipating that the majority of our weaponry would be on the raid. The attacking force was larger than any we'd yet seen, and the Beamers were all loaded with bombs rather than fence posts, one of which impacted at the entrance to the stairwell nearest the conference rooms before we could get the grid gun in position. As you can see, we're still in a bit of disarray."

John swallowed, wondering just how many people they'd lost in that night's work. "No shit, Sherlock," he said, then rolled his eyes a glare from Marshall and corrected himself. "I mean, Madam Vice President."

The title seemed to distract Peralta from the vulgarity, though; her brow furrowed, and she glanced past him toward the train. "When you say more or less — do you mean you retrieved President Hathaway?"

"All in one piece, though I wouldn't recommend letting him at a weapon or a radio anytime soon," he replied, impatiently. "A few anti-psychotics probably wouldn't go amiss, either. Look, if you want to keep on playing twenty questions, I'm game, but I think you know who we were expecting to see here. So if you'll excuse me ..."

Peralta reached out to lay a hand on his arm as he went to storm by, then glanced over at Marshall, her expression sympathetic. "Dan was caught on the fringe of the blast; he seems to be all right, though Anne was concerned he was showing symptoms of a mild heart attack. She wants to keep him overnight."

"I'm sure that went over well," Marshall observed dryly, though her face was drawn with worry.

"Yes, well. Perhaps better than it might have been; I believe he thinks it's mostly to humor her while Lexie and Tom are in there, as well. Lexie exhausted herself blocking most of the debris that would have flooded the stairwell with her ... abilities ... until Dr. Kadar and Mr. Botha could blow it back the other way, and Tom became unresponsive about the same time the strike began. He said something of the kind might happen; do you know what he was talking about?"

The fucking Dorniya. "Maybe," he said. "He thought those new aliens might contact him again. I'll leave Marshall with you for the full run-down; where's the new infirmary?"

"Where the group housing was in the department store space nearest the cafeteria; we finished switching everything over just before we ran the evacuations again," she nodded to him, mouth still pinched. "One of you ought to have told me that this contact was telepathic in nature!"

"Yeah, well, I'm working on him, but you know how Tom is," John said grimly, sharing a commiserating look with the woman.

...Sharing a commiserating look with the woman. Christ. All that bullshit he'd been feeding people about secretly being a productive member of their society; had the joke been on him all along?

....Maybe there was something to all that 'perception becomes the reality' business, after all.

---

John had seen what the new hospital space had looked like before its transformation, and the current color scheme was definitely an improvement over both its former appearance and the previous infirmary. The walls were now a soothing shade of washed-out denim blue, complementing the plastic sheets still in use as dividers, and the ceiling was a neutral color closer to sand than beige. Someone had actually taken the time to lay tile over the concrete floor and hang patriotic art prints in every cubicle as well, salvaged from God only knew where; the result was a lot more comfortable than it had any right to be, considering the purpose of the place.

John split off from the group of incoming injured the first chance he got, sticking his nose into individual cubicles until he found Lexie — still curled up, sleeping the sleep of the exhausted — and Tom, sprawled out on a pair of beds. Weaver looked up from the chair next to Tom's as John stalked in. He looked a little more pale and worn than usual, but otherwise more stubborn than ever; John wished Anne luck in trying to force him to rest.

"Good, you're back," he greeted John, cantankerously. "So tell me — what the hell is this shit?"

He gestured to Tom, who was shifting and muttering almost constantly atop the sheets, strapped down at knees and elbows to keep him from wriggling right off the bed. The clearest word that John could discern was 'No'; not a good sign in terms of finding a solution to the problem, but at least it meant he was still in there fighting.

"You think I know any better than you?" he snorted. "Aliens don't like what he has to say, I suppose — or vice versa; we both know he can be a stubborn jackass when he feels like it. They're fucking aliens, anyway; no telling what might set them off. I wish we could just kill 'em all and let their own deities sort 'em out."

"Believe me, there are times I wish that, too," Weaver sighed, rubbing a hand over his jaw. Then he gestured to the bed again. "Since this don't seem to be working, how about you give waking him up a try?"

"Seriously?" John gave him a nonplused look. "And how do you suppose I'm gonna do that? It's not like there's a manual for any of this shit."

Weaver wrinkled his nose, wearing an annoyed, long-suffering expression. "He's got at least a subconscious awareness of what's going on around him — once we realized that, we tried bringing Matt in here, but that just got him agitated. And when the rest of us try, all we get is varying degrees of 'don't worry'. Like he's convinced he's gotta protect us. You got tricks in your bag that the rest of us don't, though; so, get to it."

"All right, all right, don't get your panties in a wad — since I'm reliably informed that would be bad for your health," John snarked back. Then he sighed and approached closer to the bed, staring down into Tom's pale, sweating face. He remembered seeing all the kiddos come in and bond with Tom last time he'd been out for a while, laying hands on him one by one; looked like it was his turn, now.

"Here goes nothin'," he said, and reached out to brush the hair back from Tom's forehead. "Hey, asshole ...."

"Pope!" Weaver interrupted, scowling at him. "Insulting him's not really what I had in mind."

"It's me, Cap. You think he'd believe I'd come after him all sweetness and light?" John scoffed. Then he turned back to the figure in the bed, cupping a hand along the side of Tom's face, and tried to block out awareness of anything else. It wasn't hard; the man looked incredibly vulnerable lying there, a target for anyone who wanted to come at him. Made John want to punch everyone who'd ever intentionally hurt him — himself not excluded from that number.

"Yeah, you heard me, Mason," he said, letting the words flow as they came. "What kind of welcome home is this, huh? I bring Hathaway back to you, against all odds, even against logic, and find you sacked out in a room with someone who isn't me. Was that because you didn't think I'd succeed, or because you were afraid that you would? You know, a guy could start to feel unwanted around here ...."

Something weird happened to his head as he said the last few words; a strange pull seemed to emanate from the figure on the bed, combined with a foreign sense of frustration and indignation. Tom's alien shit, maybe? A spike of irrational fear went through him at the contact — and then the world seemed to go all wavy and hazy, and the bed looked really comfortable —

"Goddamnit, ANNE!" he thought he heard Weaver yell, behind him.

Why would he call him Anne? John wondered muzzily as he grabbed for Tom's arm. The whole point of the thing was that he wasn't Anne ....

And then he was blinking his eyes open again, somewhere he definitely hadn't been a moment before.

---

It only took John a few seconds to realize what must have happened when the freshly painted walls of the infirmary were replaced with the darker blue of a familiar bedroom in Boston. The sheer weirdness of it, however, took a little longer to get over.

"What the hell, Mason?" he blurted, backing away from his lover and dropping his hand. He'd apparently popped into existence in Tom's inner world in the same position he'd been in the outer one, only with both of them upright — and a lot more animation in Tom's wide-eyed expression. "Did you just suck me into the Matrix?"

The dream version of Mason — or vision, whatever — was dressed a lot like the real one; as was John, when he took a second to look down at himself. Was this the way they really thought of each other — was that how this worked? Or was it the way they thought of themselves? Or the alien's image of them? Or had he just passed out and started hallucinating? He really didn't think he was that imaginative, though.

Tom blinked at him; then his expression went cold and hard as he turned toward the doorway behind John.

"No," he said, with a level of loathing in his voice John hadn't heard from him in months; he'd almost forgotten how it felt to hear that tone directed his way. "I've put up with you borrowing Rebecca's face, because I understand the necessity of it. But you do not get to use his, too. Or are you no better than Karen?"

John blinked, then glanced over his shoulder — and went cold and still himself as he saw the woman standing there. He'd caught a glimpse of the photo the princes passed between themselves, so he knew immediately whose face he was seeing, but the flat, creased image hadn't done justice to the reality. Rebecca Mason was a fine-looking redhead, with a wealth of long hair that curled at the ends, professional women's attire and the graceful posture to go with it, a thin necklace around her throat ... and a distinctly puzzled expression. He could see, now, why they said Hal was the one that looked most like his mother, despite his coloring being the closest to Tom's; their features were a lot alike, and he'd learned to read Hal Mason pretty well over the last few years.

She didn't directly answer Tom's question; instead she looked John over, then frowned like any woman finding a strange man in her house in her husband's company. "Were we expecting guests tonight? I'd have appreciated a little more warning, if only because I didn't plan for dinner for six."

Tom hissed in a breath. "If you think that I'm just going to let it go ...." he began, through clenched teeth.

John glanced between the two again, remembering what Tom had said about his previous encounters with the Dorniya, and snagged Tom's arm in a firm grip. "Whoa, whoa," he interrupted. "I don't think she did do this. I mean it, whatever. What happened just before I showed up?"

Tom turned to him again, eyes wild with a tangle of furious emotions. He glanced from John's face to his hand on his forearm and then back to the alien in the doorway, voice as tense as strung piano wire. "You know what happened. You said I wasn't paying sufficient attention; I told you I was worried about my family; and you showed me what was going on in the infirmary. I don't see how you could go from that to thinking I'd appreciate you adding his face to this argument. I really don't think you've thought it all the way through, because the last thing John would want to do is encourage me to go along with your plan."

Tom had told him about Anne's little theory on why Alexis was showing such obvious effects of her non-human DNA, while the only thing Tom seemed able to do was perceive the Dorniya when no one else could. Looked like the ex and John had something else in common now, whether he liked it or not.

"Really don't think she did," he said, dryly, "considering I'm pretty sure you're the one who dragged me in here. Which is the exact opposite of what I was going for, actually. You were supposed to wake up so you could prove me wrong, not drag me down with you. For a genius, you can really be an idiot sometimes."

Tom's head whipped back around, quickly enough that John was sure he'd have heard vertebrae popping if they'd been in the waking world. "What do you ... John?" he exclaimed, eyes still dark with turbulent emotion.

"Guilty as charged," John shrugged, then glanced toward the alien again, frowning at its still-confused posture. "A little confused here myself, though. I get Lexie still being out, our girl held up half a hallway long enough to keep a bunch of people from getting crushed, but it don't seem like talking in circles really compares to all that heavy lifting. What the hell's the hold up?"

The alien masquerading as Tom's dead wife sighed, then shook her head at them. "We already discussed this, Tom. I don't see how bringing another person into our argument is going to change the fact that the cancer's coming back, or what our options are for dealing with it."

That ... had almost made sense, except for the last bit. "Cancer?" John raised his eyebrows at Tom.

Tom sighed, shaking his head. "Metaphors and resonances, remember? Not long after you left, Cochise called back to say he'd reached his father, and that the greater Volm are detaching a ship to take care of the power plant on the moon within the week. I guess the Dorniya had still been hoping I'd come up to take care of it personally, because — as best I can figure out from the few things she's dared say directly — we're still too strong, and the Espheni leader only exposes itself if it believes they've already conquered a planet, or next best thing to it. If they hang back when the power blows, and I don't go up, the Dorniya have no chance of targeting it with their doomsday weapon until things get a whole lot worse down here — and it has to be the leader, because it's the one in contact with the entirety of the Espheni race, not just the local network."

"Wait, wait. Have they even figured out how not to target the rebels? Or the Skitterized kids?" John shook his head. "I thought you were still arguing the method, not the delivery timing!"

Tom swallowed, looking guilty, and John's vision nearly whited out in fury at what that implied. "Except she can't figure that out, can she? And she still won't let you wake until you come to some kind of agreement, nevermind what you told Porter."

"Not — necessarily agree," Tom said, haltingly. "She just ... wants me to make a decision."

The strain lines around his eyes and mouth deepened further, and John understood instantly. "Yeah, sure. Bet she's been trying to tell you how much it's worth it, though; to save your other kids, and the rest of humanity. What's a few lives in place of thousands, and even more on other planets?"

"But if it only took out the spikes — if it was just me, and the rebel Skitters, who were founded by a Skitterized Dorniyan to begin with, and let's not forget how many humans they killed before that, even Red Eye —"

John could tell — or at least, he hoped — by the pained lines around Tom's eyes and the hesitation in the way he said the words that he wanted John to tell him he was wrong; that billions of lives weren't worth that sacrifice, no matter how much logic told him it was the only responsible way forward. What a change; Tom using John for a substitute conscience, rather than the other way around.

He clapped both hands to the sides of Tom's face, staring him straight in the eye. "Are you insane?"

"Uh — what?" Tom blinked, briefly knocked off his self-martyring track.

Good. John shook his head gently, and repeated himself, willing Tom to hear. "I said, are you insane, Mason?"

Tom blinked again, then seemed to abruptly remember when John had said that to him before, and gave him a faint smile. "If I am, then I guess we'll have that in common," he replied, echoing that day outside the hangar.

"No shit," John replied, dropping his hands to Tom's shoulders and giving a harsh laugh. "The first time you said that to me, we were at probably our lowest point; the day after I tried to run you off into the woods, the day before you tried to kill me over a fucking trinket and I walked rather than admit I'd been in any way wrong. We've both learned a few things since — but that one basic fact hasn't changed. So I don't know why the hell you thought it was a good idea to put that question on my shoulders."

Tom stared at him a moment longer; then his faint smile turned into a low chuckle of his own, and he leaned forward to rest his forehead against John's. "Because you're a selfish son of a bitch, and because you promised to always question my decisions," he said, warmly.

"You're damn right I am," John snorted. "So you know what I'm gonna say. Hell, you told her five minutes ago; the last thing I'll do is encourage you to go along with this suicidal plan of hers. There's got to be some intervening step between full-on martyrdom slash genocide, and leaving the whole damn 'network' in place ...."

He trailed off rather abruptly as that sparked a new chain of thought, reminding him of something else he'd wanted to ask, and he pulled back to stare wide-eyed at Mason. "Network ... why did you use the word network?"

"Because ... it is?" Tom frowned at him. "I get the sense that ... the Espheni are connected to the shadow plane like nodes in a web; the ones in charge hold more and deeper connections than others, but they're all linked together in a greater pattern, with their leader in the center. If we attacked one of the commanders on Earth, we'd only get its immediate peers. Each one can only infect the ones they're connected to directly, and the doomsday infection would burn too shallowly to make the jump off-planet. But if we got the queen ...."

"Queen?" That was the first he'd heard the term.

Tom shook his head, frowning. "I don't know why I said that — I don't know how I know this. Maybe I'm picking it up from her, but ... I just know that's how their species works."

John gnawed his lower lip, the half-formed idea he'd had on the way back from Richmond brewing in his thoughts again. "You know, I knew a guy who knew a guy in prison — hacker type, knew a lot about computer networks. Got caught for some damn fool offline stunt; warden didn't know what he had, and let him at the library computers. He didn't stick around long. Anyway — he told me once, there's two kinds of viruses at heart. Ones that attack across the network — frying computers, cyberlocking 'em, stealing information, whatever. Which sounds a lot like what the Dorniya's trying to do."

He glanced toward the woman in the doorway again — only to find her suddenly standing a lot closer, staring up at him intently with her arms crossed over her chest. "Go on," she said lightly, lifting her eyebrows at him. "It's always interesting, listening to Tom discuss his passions with someone who shares them."

That was ... a slightly surreal comment, considering that the Dorniya apparently liked to stir up old echoes of things Tom's wife had actually said to make its point. Did that mean he was on the right track? He shook that off, disturbed, and continued. "Right. Anyway ... the others attack the network itself. Denial of service, error pages all over, that kind of thing. I was just thinking about something I read in one of those books of yours, the Art of War, about armies needing to hear each other. And it occurred to me ...."

Tom sucked in a sharp breath. "'Because they could not hear each other, they made gongs and drums'," he quoted; "'because they could not see each other they made pennants and flags' ... the shadow plane is the way they communicate. The Espheni don't vocalize; they barely use their radio sense, especially since we started experimenting with jamming them; they don't have any equivalent substitute. It'd destroy their ability to command their mechs and Beamers, their method of controlling the Skitters, the Skitters' ability to enslave our children, anything and everything except their individual muscle power. Which still is considerable, but ...."

"Nothin' compared to what we can do to them in return. And more importantly, won't kill your kid or his friends, just inconvenience 'em for a while," John grinned, then lifted an eyebrow at the Rebecca avatar again. "Fry their ability to connect, but leave 'em alive. Sooner or later they'll have to send more to investigate. If this shit hangs around in their systems like a real virus, and some of those carry it away to report back to this queen…."

Rebecca's eyebrows were halfway up her forehead; she glanced between him and Tom, and then broke into a sudden, brilliant smile. Very briefly, her image flickered, the woman replaced for a second or two by a slimy-looking thing with grey-brown skin, huge eyes, and all too many legs and arms; then the face of Tom's wife was back, and she leaned up to kiss them both on the cheek before speaking directly for the first time since John had joined the conversation. "I did say our child had chosen better than we could have imagined; but even then I had not guessed how much. That would truly be justice: a lonely, lingering and inevitable dwindling into the dark, helpless before everyone they ever harmed." Her voice was fierce as she spoke the last few words.

Then she shook her head and slipped back into Rebecca's phrasing, warmly amused and affectionate toward her husband. "The tide's going out, Tom; but you have a little time. Try not to miss the sunrise tomorrow; it should be spectacular."

Just as she finished speaking, she shot a sideways look at John, and nodded to him; then the room dissolved around him just as quickly as it appeared, dumping him back into reality with no warning.

---

They hadn't taken him far when he'd passed out, at least; John woke still latched onto Tom's wrist with a white-knuckled grip, sprawled beside him on the thin mattress of a gurney. The straps had been removed; apparently, John joining him had had the same effect. There was a joke to be made there, but he was too fried to work out the details.

"Man. Anyone get the number of the bus that hit me?" he groaned, rubbing at his eyes with his free hand.

"Sorry about that," a much rougher voice replied; then the wrist he was holding onto turned in his grasp until callused fingers threaded through his. "Didn't know I could do that."

"King of chaos," John reminded him with a snort, locking gazes with the man in the next bed.

"Guilty as charged," Tom replied, eyes twinkling as his mouth curved in a smile.

"Pope? Dad?" a voice from the hallway broke in on the moment, and they both turned to look into the very relieved face of Ben Mason. "GUYS! They're awake!"

"Ben! No yelling in my infirmary; your family aren't the only ones in here!" another voice called back; Anne, the sound of whose hurried footsteps approaching belied her scolding, low-voiced words.

John chuckled and sat up slowly, keeping hold of Tom's hand. "Hey, simmer down, kid; my head hurts. Seems your dad's not content with having Storm slash Jean Grey for a daughter, and — whatever Spiderman/ Wolverine graft you're supposed to be for a son. He's decided to go all Charles Xavier on us; it's turning into a whole mutant convention in here."

"'Decided' implies I had a choice in the matter," Tom said dryly, slowly levering himself to a seated position beside John, squinting at his middle son. "Hey — how'd the battle go? The one here, I mean. I'm guessing Richmond went okay, since you're both in one piece?"

"The battle here went fine. A little damage, but nothin' that can't be repaired," the gruff voice of Dan Weaver answered from the other side of the room; he was still in the same seat he'd been in before. "We were a little more worried about you. What the hell happened to you, Tom?"

"The Dorniya," Tom said, shaking his head, then squeezed John's hand. "She contacted me, like I thought she might, but we had a pretty fundamental difference of opinion on what to needs to happen next. John broke the stalemate, though. Dan — I think we've come up with an idea that might actually win us this war."

"What sort of idea?" Anne asked, crowding into the small space with Tanya right behind her, and the other three — Hal, Maggie, and Matt — squeezing in around them.

"We'll have to test it to make sure, but — they said they'll give us a weapon that will cut off the Espheni's ability to communicate with each other. They won't be able to coordinate attacks, or impose their will on any Skitters, or give orders to their mechs ...."

"In short, they're gonna be the caveman in our caveman versus the astronaut argument, for a change," John said, rubbing at a throbbing temple with his free hand. It sure felt like there were cavemen battling inside his skull; he hadn't had a headache that bad since the time he'd been interrogated by Karen when he was on his own between Richmond and the hospital in Waverly. Hopefully, neither head-trip had done him and his all-human DNA any permanent damage.

"You came up with this idea?" Maggie replied skeptically, then turned to Tom. "Are you sure you weren't just hallucinating his involvement? You were out for a really long time, you know."

"Hey!" Tanya objected, turning to her indignantly, jabbing her shoulder with one petite hand. "That's my dad you're talking about!"

"Girls, girls ...." John started to object, then laughed at the ridiculousness of the situation. Step-sisters-in-law squabbling over the parents, sort of, almost; a potent reminder that his choice wasn't just loading him down with a bunch of awkward new step-relatives. He was sharing them with Tanya, too.

"Uncle John?" the youngest daughter-figure of the Mason pack asked, voice breaking on a yawn. "Are you okay?"

John glanced over to see Lexie rubbing sleep out of her eyes; the white streak in her hair was much thicker now, but the soft affection and worry in her face was still one hundred percent Mason. Accept no substitutes, dilutions, or corruptions: they'd proven the hard way that the Mason brand always shone through.

"Yeah, sweetheart, I'm fine," he beamed at her across the room. "Your sisters are just being ridiculous." Then he turned that irrepressible smile on someone much closer by. Maybe he was letting the atmosphere go to his head again, the way he had at that party right after they took Jacksonville; maybe he'd have second thoughts again later; but maybe he didn't give a damn anymore.

"Hey, Mason," he said, clearing his throat.

"Yeah, Pope?" Tom cocked an expectant eyebrow at him.

John traced his eyes all over the familiar features, again; the stress lines and laugh lines, the grey threads working their way into his dark hair and closely trimmed beard, the light in his eyes as he looked at John. All those years of struggling for respect, spitting in the face of anyone who wouldn't give it, and all it had taken to sate that starving hunger was that look on the face of a man who'd once been his nemesis. He'd have to be a fool to piss all that away over a few qualms about what might or might not happen if the shine ever wore off.

If their story had been a romance flick, this would have been the moment when he got all teary-eyed and asked his lover to marry him, like any good reformed bad boy with a heart of gold. But even laying aside the fact that while they might be from Massachusetts, they were living in South Carolina, not one of the states that had legalized gay marriage before the aliens' arrival, and Tom had just spent most of a year making a big deal about upholding the old laws wherever possible until they could be changed by legal process — apocalyptic dramas played by different rules. If he begged fate that way he'd doom himself to going out in a blaze of glory, and it'd be a tossup whether the history books would record him as the tragically heroic First Husband, or the ungovernable ex-con with a bad track record who didn't deserve any tears their perfect President might shed.

Let Hal be the one to bend the knee for Mags on the eve of eternity; he'd seen the kid sneak into a wrecked pawn shop during their scouting trip, and come out pocketing a box too small to hold a gun. John had a different sort of affirmation to offer.

"When I said 'whither thou goest', I really wasn't anticipating a trip into the ol' grey matter. Keep me out of it next time, would you? I'm not in that big a hurry to get to the 'aught but death' part, and my head is killing me."

The corners of Tom's eyes crinkled more deeply; message received. "Well, we can't have that, can we," he replied, dryly. "Shall I kiss it and make it better?"

Ben made a gagging noise, shattering the moment with the force of his teenage indignation. "You're flirting again? Now? Is this really the time?"

John cast a sardonic eye at him. "Know a better time for it than right after you both thought you were gonna die, and right before you go out to do it all over again? No? Didn't think so."

"He does have a point, though. I did promise to report as soon as I knew more about what the Dorniya wanted," Tom sighed regretfully, then began the slow progress of untangling himself from John's grip, the sheets, and the monitors hooked up to him. "Dan, if you'll gather the usual suspects in my office?"

"You sure? You been down for a half a day, at least," Weaver replied, getting up out of his chair.

"No time like the present," Tom rasped. "Although — you look as wrung out as I feel. Something happen to you, too?"

"Don't worry about me. I'm fine," Weaver tried to wave that away.

Of course, that was a stupid thing to do in the infirmary with Anne standing right there. "No, you're not," she said, with a stern, fond expression, laying a hand on the colonel's arm. "I won't stop either of you from walking to Tom's office, because I know how important this is, but I'll send Lourdes to Marina to do the gathering. You don't need to be running around and straining yourself just yet."

"Is that your professional, medical opinion, Doctor?" Weaver scowled at her.

"Considering it's only been a year and a half or so since your entire cardiovascular system was under attack by an alien parasite, and it's becoming pretty obvious that there was some collateral damage? Yes," she replied, sternly. "Now sit back down; and if you're still standing when I come back in here, my second request will be accompanied by a sedative."

"Yes, ma'am," Weaver sighed, and sank back down. John saw the quickly hidden relief in his expression, though, and was pretty sure Anne had made the right call.

"Anyone else have something urgent to say?" Tom said, looking around at the others with a pointed eyebrow.

The frozen tableau in the room fell apart at that question, as the others all ducked in for a hug and a quick avowal that they were all OK. John sighed, then turned and slid off the gurney, ducking to retrieve their rifles from where someone with some brains had stashed them under Tom's bed. Then he sidled over to stand by Lexie's bed and wait out all the base-touching, comfort-seeking, relief-expressing emoting going on.

The girl herself had almost drifted back under after her brief greeting, but she opened her eyes again on a yawn when John glanced down at her. "I did it, Uncle John," she said quietly, almost glowing with self-confidence. A better contrast to the day after her dad's kidnapping, he couldn't have wished for.

"I heard, yeah. That practice paying off already, huh?" He patted her hand.

"They're still afraid," she nodded slowly on her pillow. "But some of them are glad, too. It feels really nice."

"It does indeed," he replied, as her eyelids drooped shut again. Out of the mouths of babes. "It does indeed."

---

The second debriefing on the matter of the Dorniya was quite a bit shorter than the first had been. It didn't take Tom long to summarize the new developments, and what it would mean in context with the success of Cochise's request for help from his father.

"We'll test it on a regular Skitter first; provided that goes well, all we'll have to do is be in place outside Greensboro or one of the other Espheni strongholds, maybe the nearest school, when the Volm arrive and the power plant goes down. Jab the Overlord with it — and they'll lose both their tech and their connection to each other all at once. This war will go from an uphill struggle against a better armed and more numerous foe, to an extermination mission almost overnight," he concluded, voice almost throbbing with intensity and conviction.

The VP replied first; she was usually the voice of caution, but her expression was fraught with hope. "And if the test doesn't work? If these Dorniya are misleading us?" she asked, clenching her hands together.

"Then the power plant still goes down, and we still have a better chance than we do now. And before you ask, if the Volm let us down, too — Dr. Kadar tells me we have a Beamer mostly patched back together, and plenty of rebel Skitters willing to assist us in taking the moonbase down ourselves. And if that falls through, we just keep doing what we've been doing all along while we think up something new. There's no real downside, here."

Peralta pressed her lips together, then glanced beseechingly at the general.

General Porter sighed, then nodded. "I'll support this, with a few conditions. You're not going to the beach alone tomorrow; even if you trust the Dorniya, you said they were worried about being overheard, so that point's non-negotiable. And I don't think you should be on the mission to deliver the weapon either, if it comes to that."

"Way ahead of you there," John spoke up. "I'm going with him in the morning — the Dorniya shouldn't object to that, since it met me today — and we'll have the Berserkers and Hal's crew all staking out the approaches. As for Greensboro — I'd suggest sending Captain Marshall's crew again with some of the First Continental. Marshall's gonna be keen for a win after what happened to Hathaway, and the Second Mass could sure use the break."

"Amen to that," Maggie muttered.

Weaver glanced at her, then around at all the rest of them, and finally nodded. "I don't like it; but Tom's right, there's not much of a downside if we take a few precautions. One thing you haven't mentioned, though. Any indication what the Dorniya plan to do if we do take down the Espheni?"

Tom shrugged expansively. "The one I've spoken to hasn't said much; they seem to have lived mostly for revenge since their planet was conquered. Help us, I would hope; they obviously have some pretty advanced technology, and we're going to need some kind of boost to get the world back on its feet before any hope of maintaining at least some of our pre-war cultures collapses entirely. If that does happen, I'll probably resign; we'll need to hold an election, but I get that you're worried about her having constant access to the President's mind, and I agree. I'm sure I'll find some way to continue contributing, though."

"Oh, no doubt," Weaver said dryly. "Professor Emeritus at some new United Nations University, or something?"

"Oh, I'd hope for something a little more hands-on than that," Tom snorted — then threw a sidewise glance at John, as if to include him in the joke.

"If you didn't, I'd drag you to Dr. Glass to have your head examined," John grinned back. "Again."

Half the table laughed in agreement, folding John in as if his voice actually held equal weight in their council.

The day after the world ended, there'd only been one thing John had wanted: revenge. At the time, he'd thought that meant killing every single Skitter he came across.

But that wasn't true, was it? There was a saying that living well was the best revenge ... and in that moment, he was finally ready to believe that it might be the truth.

---

Sometime later that evening, once the last of the day's business was done, Tom led the way back to the infirmary to check in with their kids before setting the alarm for dawn and laying down to try and get some rest. Matt and Tanya had voiced the intention to finish off Watership Down with Lexie, and it had sounded like the others intended to hang out there to keep them company, an informal family night before whatever might come next.

They heard Tanya's clear voice rising and falling as they entered the old store, and followed it back to Alexis' cubicle. The rest of the infirmary's residents had fallen quiet, listening; John followed Tom in equal silence, the two of them placing their feet as carefully on the tile as if scouting in the woods. A glimpse through the doorway showed Hal and Maggie seated on Tom's old bed, their hands linked, and a spark of light winking from one of Maggie's fingers; Ben and Denny seated cross-legged on a cabinet; Matt at the foot of Alexis' bed; Lourdes seated next to Lexie, running a brush through her hair; and Tanya holding forth to all of them from the middle of the room, turning the last pages in the worn old paperback.

Tom smiled at the scene, a soft light in his eyes as he stared at their collective and adjacent offspring, then backed quietly away. "I just wanted to see them — I don't want to interrupt."

"They're a pretty good group of kids," John murmured. "No matter what happens next, they've got the stuff to get through it."

"Think so, huh?" Tom turned that luminous smile at him.

"'Course. Add Jeanne and her boy and you've got all the next generation of Clan Mason in there. Even if we fell off the face of the planet tomorrow, the Espheni wouldn't stand a chance."

"Then let's make sure they don't have to," Tom said, and reached out, hooking John by a belt loop to pull him in close.

John's pulse rushed loudly in his ears, almost drowning out his daughter's reading as they threw themselves into that kiss. Making all the promises John wouldn't speak aloud, conveying Tom's answers without making hostages of them to fate.

"Bed?" he said hoarsely after a long minute, flushed from head to toe with yearning.

Whatever happened the next day ... for once in his life, John Pope was at peace.

Behind them, Tanya's voice rose as she read the last few sentences.

---

(as to the east, a strange spaceship all spherical shapes and grey-on-white tones dipped under low cloud cover toward the ocean, a glowing cylinder full of engineered pathogen waiting for delivery in its hold)

(as to the west — galactically speaking — a Volm warship veered from the defense of their people's home fleet, one more link in a chain of very strange events connecting them to a world that should have been nothing but yet another backwater in this war)

---

"The wind freshened, and soon myriads of dry beech leaves were filling the ditches and hollows and blowing in gusts across the dark miles of open grass.

"Underground, the story continued."

-THE END-


>> Research Notes (for the curious)