My gut twisted into knots. Every step further into the house felt like a leaden weight around my ankles, a ringing finality that made everything more real, more concrete. The more I saw with my own eyes instead of the touch of my swarm and the refracted vision of my bugs, the more undeniable the truth became.
My fingers trailed through the dust on the banister — a month was too conservative. This was enough for at least three, if not more. August, July, June… Could it have been as far back as May? Had something happened during Leviathan? Had my younger self never made it in time to draw Leviathan away from that shelter, or…had Leviathan chosen a different shelter to break into that day?
The pictures and ornaments and all of the personal touches had been removed from the living room, but the TV was still there, and it still turned on when I thumbed the power button. The house hadn't been disconnected from the utilities, it seemed, which meant…
Which meant…what, exactly? Was the real estate agency paying the electricity and water bills? There weren't any squatters hanging around, none but the bugs that had moved in during the absence of people and chemicals to drive them away, but I guess if they wanted to show prospective buyers that the pipes were in good condition, then…
I didn't know. I didn't know anything about how this was supposed to work, and my thoughts were disconnected, latching onto tiny details that didn't fucking matter.
The water turned on in the kitchen, at least, and the boiler was in working order. So we wouldn't have to worry about taking hot showers while we were here. Depending on how long we had to stay in Brockton, we could be here and gone before the utilities companies realized someone was using the water and electricity in a house that was supposed to be empty. By the time any came along to check, we might be long gone, and we'd still leave behind more of a trace of our presence than…than Dad had.
I closed my eyes. For an instant, I could imagine Dad sitting there at that sad little table, coffee mug in hand and deep circles under his eyes. Struggling. Failing. But trying, despite it all. Love wasn't enough to fix all of our problems, wasn't enough to bridge the gap that had eventually formed between us, and wasn't enough to make up for all of the ways he had fallen apart after Mom died. But it had to count for something.
When I opened my eyes again, he wasn't there. The sheet remained, thrown over the table and the chairs, a mere suggestion of what lied beneath, what had been covered up and hidden. Nothing had changed.
The floorboards creaked. I hadn't even noticed him coming in, but Ritsuka stood there, worried, hesitant. The others waited at the front door, just as concerned. It seemed that either they had elected to send him in alone or he was the only one brave enough to venture close.
"Senpai?" he said. "Is…everything…?"
No, it wasn't. I didn't know how to even begin explaining the complicated swirl of emotions inside of me, begging for release. The moment I thought to give voice to one, it was swept aside and replaced by something different, and the words failed before they could make it to my lips.
I didn't know what had happened. I wanted to know what had happened. How Dad had… How the house had come to be like this and why. I didn't want to know, because the story it told would be a tragedy no matter how it unfolded, and one way or another, it would surely be my fault.
I was wrong before. A world where all of my sacrifices had been meaningless wasn't the only version of Earth Bet that could hurt me.
"Senpai?" Ritsuka tried again. He took another hesitant step closer, and then, slowly and cautiously, he turned his head and gave the kitchen a cursory glance. The kind of simple once-over you gave a place when you were seeing it for the first time but not really looking. "Is this…?"
"My childhood home," I confirmed, because there was no point in hiding it. "I…wasn't expecting it to be empty."
A long moment of awkward silence hung. He knew. He understood. And he didn't have any idea what to say or how he could possibly make it better, so he said nothing and just stood there, staring at me helplessly.
It made me feel even more pathetic. Everything I'd been through, all the storms I'd weathered, all of the traumas I'd endured from so many different directions, and a fucking house was what shook me the most. A house. And not even some mockup specifically meant to fuck with me, it was just a regular old house that happened to be empty when I thought there would be someone here.
What was I doing jumping to conclusions anyhow? The house was bundled up and set for sale — so? Why did that suddenly mean I was an orphan? I'd never thought Dad would let himself leave Brockton if it meant abandoning the Dockworkers, but if he caught me out before my younger self could get too deep in the cape scene and do things she couldn't take back, then maybe he'd picked up and dragged her off to someplace without so many screws loose. Especially if he thought she was in over her head, as I had so often been in my early career.
It was as good a theory as any for now.
I stepped away from the kitchen table and addressed the whole group: "The utilities are still up and running and this place has been on the market long enough to gather some dust, so there shouldn't be any problem with us staying here for a day or two until our meeting with Coil."
Rika stared at me incredulously, like I was some kind of strange, alien creature she'd never seen before. Even Emiya looked faintly spooked.
"Miss Taylor…" Mash murmured.
"We're off the grid enough that no one should be looking for us here," I went on, ignoring their looks and their pity, "so we can do a little investigating between now and then. Maybe find out more about when and where this Singularity diverged from…Earth Bet as I knew it."
"Senpai," said Ritsuka, "are you sure?"
I regarded him evenly. "Why wouldn't I be? Unless one of you has a reason why we should go somewhere else."
His lips drew tight, but he had to admit, "No. None."
I was lying to myself. I knew I was lying to myself. But until I knew for sure, I could let myself believe that little lie and preserve whatever shred of hope I had left.
"Set this location as home base on your maps, so you can find your way back here on your own," I ordered, and the others still didn't seem to have any idea what to say. "Rika, the fridge is empty, so you and Emiya need to head out to the nearest grocery store and pick up some food for us to eat. Just what you can carry for now. We can get more as we need it."
Rika startled, and it took her an extra second to gather her wits. "U-uh, right! Yeah!"
"Ritsuka." I turned back to him next, and he shifted uncertainly, brow furrowed. "You and Mash need to find the nearest Ley Line Terminal so that we can contact Chaldea whenever we need to and call in supplies if we have to. I'm sure I don't need to tell you to stay away if it turns out someone else is already making use of it. We don't want to go picking fights if we don't have to."
He nodded. "Got it." For a moment, he hesitated, and then mustered his bravery and asked, "And what about you, Senpai? Are you going to stay here and…I guess you could call it fortifying this place?"
It wasn't a bad idea — but no. "I'm going to head out and do some investigating to see if I can pick up any clues about what happened and when this Singularity actually diverged. I'll be taking Arash with me when he gets back, which will leave Aífe here to do that fortifying."
Aífe shimmered into existence. "As much as can be done, at any rate. I'm not a Caster, but I should at least be able to set up a bounded field to warn us of intruders and make the walls a little sturdier."
Hopefully, none of that would be necessary. The last thing I wanted… But if I couldn't even be sure that my own house would be as I remembered it from this time, then I was a lot more leery of taking my chances with anyone or anything else that I might have otherwise relied upon.
"We'll meet back up here in a couple hours for lunch, once Emiya and Rika are done shopping," I said firmly. "We'll make further plans on what to do after that. But this isn't London, and this isn't Tokyo." I passed a look between both of the twins. "One of the best times to investigate what's happened with the cape scene will be later on tonight, around midnight. We'll do a circuit of the Docks and check out the usual haunts then, so don't tire yourself out on anything unnecessary. Got it?"
Almost on reflex, the twins agreed, "Right!"
And then it caught up with them, and Rika looked at me incredulously, "Wait, a nighttime patrol? And Senpai's costume had a cape thingy… Does that make us the Bat family?"
Ritsuka let out a quiet groan. "Really not the time, Rika…" He took her by the shoulders and steered her back towards the front yard. "Come on. We should probably figure out where the nearest grocery store is before you go tearing off —"
Mash turned to follow, but hesitated and lingered for a moment, turning back to me. "Miss Taylor?" she said in a soft, small voice. "Are you really okay?"
No. I wasn't even in the same vicinity as okay, but if I was going to lead this mission, I had to pretend I was well enough to keep myself and this team together. "I will be, Mash. Now go with Ritsuka. And be careful, because there really is no telling what sort of Servants Coil has hanging around the city."
She didn't look like she really believed me, but she let the subject drop, turned back around, and walked over to where the twins were huddled around their maps. That damned step creaked beneath her weight, still unfixed despite the months that had gone by since this house must have gone up on the market.
Aífe regarded me with an unreadable look, and then set off to start fortifying the house against intruders. I left her to it and walked away, heading back out the front door myself. My fingers lingered on the banister on the way out, and the thick film of dust clung to my fingertips like tar.
Three months. So much could have happened, so much had happened, and I didn't have the first clue what might have led to this particular outcome. I wasn't sure I was going to be ready for the answer when I got it.
It took the twins, Mash, and Emiya fifteen minutes to get their routes planned out and leave, and it was another five before Arash appeared on the porch with me. He glanced at the house, but if he recognized it or if he knew what it was to me, he didn't say. He didn't offer me condolences, he didn't express pity, he just gave me his presence, as stalwart as always and all the more comforting for it.
"Concord was the same," he reported. "Like a city out of time. No modern amenities, no electronics, no sign of industry. Just a town from the late 18th century, from the fashion to the farmwork."
What I'd been expecting then.
"Ritsuka suggested that it might be like London, only more extreme because the Singularity is larger," I told him.
"You mean like how Tohsaka was pulled forward nearly a hundred years," Arash surmised. He hummed. "You don't agree?"
"I think it fits," I said, "but I'm not sure we can claim to have a definitive answer this early on."
He nodded. "Fair enough. I'm guessing the others went out for supplies?"
"Among other things," I answered. "Aífe is fortifying the house. You and I will be heading out to do a little bit of investigating."
I unzipped my bag, reached in, and tugged out the clothes he'd passed off to me earlier. He caught them effortlessly when I tossed them his way.
"Once you get changed, we'll head out," I said. "Our first stop is to get a burner phone so I can make a few calls and check in on a few people I know. We'll figure things out from there."
"Got it."
He ducked inside the house for a minute, slipping into the small bathroom underneath the stairs, and was back out a couple minutes later, dressed in the casual clothes he'd swiped yesterday at the Quincy Market. With that hair and those clothes, it really was startling how easily he could fit into the modern era.
It made me miss the clothes that were absent from the closet in my room. I'd outgrown the frumpy hoodies and loose-fitting jeans in just about every sense of the word, but they were less conspicuous than the uniform my mystic code provided. Could Da Vinci cook up another module fast enough for us to use so that we didn't stick out the entire time we were here? I'd have to ask.
"Our first stop is the nearest phone store," I said. "I need to pick up a burner to use, something that can't be easily tracked back to us."
Once we were back out on the street, a twist of the bar and a tendril of energy spawned my bike and helmet again, and I looked back at Arash. "That enough room for you?"
He didn't hesitate; he walked up to me and the bike, swung a leg over top of it, and settled his weight into the seat behind me. I could feel his presence at my back, first as that vague sort of air he had as a Servant, and then as a literal pressure as he leaned against me and wrapped his arms around my waist. His broad chest, his strong arms, his warmth. He'd carried me before, but somehow, it felt different now.
"I think I'll manage," he said.
With a low, quiet rumble, my bike lurched into motion, and we took off down the street.
It took about ten minutes to get to the nearest shopping center with a phone store, and another ten or so to get in, grab a burner phone, and pay for it with Da Vinci's magic card. My clothing got me some strange looks, but not too many, and the bike got me stranger looks, all the more so for the lengths I had to go to in order to disguise it appearing and disappearing between my trip in and out of the store, but Brockton Bay was the cape capital of the USA, so no one looked too closely.
Phone in hand, the next place I drove us to was the Boardwalk, which was somehow still intact, as though Leviathan had never rampaged through the city. If the deviation went back far enough, maybe he hadn't, but I wasn't willing to hang my hat on that when a good enough Caster could probably have put the whole thing to rights in an afternoon. Even without that, I couldn't see Coil sparing any expense to get the city into the best shape he possibly could, just for the PR alone.
After finding a place to "park," Arash and I kept going on foot, and I led him to a karaoke bar, the kind that had individual booths with soundproofed rooms.
My understanding was that the place was owned by a Japanese man, and that had something to do with why it had private booths to begin with. If the rumors from Winslow were to be believed, very few of the booths were actually used for karaoke, but it had been years and I had no idea how truthful they were.
Once the booth was paid for and we were sequestered away in relative silence, I sat down on the couch and pulled out the phone, an older looking model that could have come from the generation right before smartphones came out. The screen was smaller, and so was the rest of it, but the numbers worked and so did the phone itself, so it did the job I needed it for.
There were any number of people I probably should have tried to reach out to first, all of them for very good reasons. Trying to find my old friends, for example, and seeing why the Undersiders seemed to have dropped off the map. Defiant, if he still used the same number, or maybe Dragon, because there was a very short list of people I would be willing to trust from this time period and Dragon was definitely on the list.
The first number I put in — one I knew so well I could dial it by heart — belonged to none of those, because I was being selfish. I needed to know. I couldn't just cling to the vague hope until something threw the truth in my face.
The phone rang, and my heart thundered in my chest as I held it up to my ear. Every ring brought the inevitable closer, and my thumb trembled with the urge to jerk the phone away and slam the button to end the call.
I didn't. And on the fourth ring, there was a click as the person on the other end picked up. My breath caught in my throat — against all logic and reason, I expected to hear Dad answer.
"Hello?"
Kurt. It wasn't Dad, and the mere truth of that glued my tongue to the roof of my mouth for a second too long.
"H-hello," I said, pitching my voice up an octave to disguise it. I cleared my throat. "Excuse me. Hello. I'm sorry to bother you, but I've been out of town for the past several months and I was hoping to speak to Danny Hebert, because he doesn't seem to be answering his home phone. Do you know how I might get into contact with him?"
There was a moment of silence. From the other end, I couldn't even hear Kurt breathing, let alone discern what he might have been thinking or doing. Maybe I should have made this call from nearby the DWU headquarters so that I could keep an eye on him with my bugs and gauge his reactions that way.
"Hello? Sir, are you there?"
"Is this some kind of joke?"
My brow furrowed. "Sir, I assure you —"
"Because if it is, it's not funny."
"This isn't a joke," I told him. "I'm serious."
"Look," he said, and he sounded angry and impatient, like he was barely holding himself back, "I don't have any idea what you're trying to pull, but if this is some kind of scam, then go somewhere else and leave the DWU out of it."
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"This isn't a joke, this isn't a scam," I said. "I'm not looking for money or anything like that. I just want to know how I can get in contact with the Heberts. That's it."
"Oh, is that all you want?" Kurt said snidely, voice rising. "Well, in that case, you can fuck right off. In fact, go down the cemetery, pick out their names, then find yourself a plot of land in the middle of the ass end of nowhere as far away from them as you can, and dig a hole until you keel over and die, because no matter how deep you get, it sure as fucking hell won't be as deep as the one you deserve, you heartless bitch."
The click of Kurt hanging up the phone was like thunder, and for a long several seconds, I sat there dumbly as the discordant buzz of a disconnected line hummed in my ear. The nameless dread that had been swirling in my stomach — abated only by the fragile hope I'd been clinging to since we found the house abandoned and empty — returned with a vengeance and solidified deep in my gut like a block of lead.
"Bad news?" Arash asked grimly.
"Maybe," I said, and his eyes narrowed at the quiver in my voice that betrayed me, but he didn't comment on it or draw attention to it.
I didn't…want to believe it. I didn't. And I didn't think I'd let myself be fully convinced until I saw irrefutable proof with my own eyes, but…
Yeah. But the only one I was fooling was myself. Something had happened. Something bad. Something that had left Kurt in charge of the DWU and answering the line that I had only ever known to be my dad's, the office of the Head of Hiring. Something bad enough that the mere mention of my dad's name had gotten a reaction that hostile.
Something is rotten in the state of Denmark, a voice whose exact tone and timber I could no longer remember clearly whispered in my ear. I had to close my eyes, because now, now, of all times, thinking of Mom would only make things worse.
I moved the phone away from my ear and jabbed the button to end the call with my thumb, maybe a bit harder than necessary. In for seven, hold for five, out for eleven. One, two, three… It helped, that breathing exercise, but it didn't dislodge that block that had taken up residence in my lower belly, poisoning me with every second.
Once I felt a little bit more in control, I looked back down at the screen on that burner phone and dialed my next number. When I held it back up to my ear, however, an entirely different series of tones played, and a cool, feminine voice told me, "We're sorry, the number you are dialing cannot be reached. Please hang up and try again."
Lisa. Did something happen to you, too?
The Undersiders had never done most of the things I remembered doing with them. Even that fateful bank robbery had either never happened or never got the publicity needed to raise their profile. They were ghosts, spoken of only in rumor and bandied about only as vague conspiracies. Had Coil simply cut them loose once he had Servants at his beck and call, or had something worse happened to them?
It was impossible to say. There were any number of reasons why Lisa's number might have changed or been abandoned, and not all of them meant she was locked in some dungeon somewhere or buried in a shallow, watery grave beneath the Boardwalk.
I tried another number. Brian's. "We're sorry, the number you are dialing cannot be reached —"
I hung up, tried again. Alec's, this time. "We're sorry —"
Rachel. "We're sorry —"
I even tried Aisha —
"We're sorry, the number you are dialing cannot be reached."
— but the result was the same each time.
Was I just misremembering their numbers? I couldn't help but wonder. It had been the better part of four years since I used most of them, and I'd suffered some…pretty major brain trauma in the meantime. It wasn't impossible that I was just getting the numbers wrong and dialing up numbers that weren't currently in use.
But that didn't feel right. It felt like an excuse, a reason to spare my feelings and keep clinging to whatever shreds of hope I still had left.
"No luck?" Arash asked.
"None."
He hummed. "You've tried everything you can think of, then?"
All of the people I would trust to give me straight answers — no, wait, there was one other person who might be able to help me, wasn't there? Without a way to reliably contact Dragon or know if Armsmaster had become the Defiant I might have called a friend, there really wasn't anyone else I could think of to try.
He'd been a Ward by the time we had met and faced Behemoth together in New Delhi, hadn't he? That much at least I wasn't sure had still happened, because Accord was still alive, but if he'd still Triggered all the same, then maybe he could at least put me on the right track.
I dialed the number as I remembered it, and I half-expected to get the same message as before, telling me that the number was unreachable. To my surprise, however, the phone rang, and a few seconds later, the other side picked up with a click.
"Hello?" a familiar voice asked. Theo. He sounded younger than I remembered, because of course he did. I was four years older than him now.
"Ah, hello." Fuck, what was I supposed to say? How did I ask about any of what I needed to know without seeming like a stalker or a nutjob? Direct was out — too big a gamble. "I'm… This is Theo Anders, right?"
A shift, a pause, a moment of caution and hesitation. "Yes, ma'am," he said. "Might I ask who I'm speaking to?"
"I'm…not sure if you remember me," I said, because he might only have met my younger self in passing. "Taylor. Taylor Hebert?"
Another pause. "It…sounds familiar. Do I know you from school?"
"No," I said, "I don't think…we've ever met, face to face. Not without something in the way. But if you've ever been to Chicago, there was a, uh, extracurricular function where I think we spoke, once or twice. As part of a government intern project."
Those were some of the covers used to protect the Wards and their identities. If he was a cape, if he was a Ward, then they should all mean something to him.
"I'm…" He hesitated. "I'm sorry, ma'am, but I don't think I've ever been to Chicago. Not as far as I can remember."
Damn it.
"You don't remember Ava?" I asked, throwing out my last resorts. "Everett? Kathy Oldershaw?"
"I'm sorry, ma'am," he said, and the way he said it made me sure he wasn't just trying to cover for them, "but I don't know anyone by those names."
"I see." Of course it couldn't be that easy. "My mistake. I'm sorry to bother you, Theo."
He said something in return that might have been wishing me luck, but I had already pulled the phone away from my ear, so I didn't hear it clearly before I ended the call. The only number that hadn't been a dead end, and it hadn't gotten me much closer to figuring out what was going on and what had happened.
It wasn't a total wash, at least. Theo wasn't a Ward, and here and now, he might not even have Triggered. Yet? Without knowing what his original Trigger Event was, I couldn't even say for sure that he would or wouldn't at any point in the future.
"What next?" Arash asked in the quiet that followed.
What next, indeed? I hadn't lost all avenues of investigation, I'd just lost the easiest ones, the simplest ones, and the ones that I had decent leverage over. This was still Brockton Bay, where I'd grown up, where I'd become a cape, where I'd fought so many battles, including for this city's life and soul. There were still plenty of stones for me to overturn.
"Next," I said, "we start prodding a few potential bee hives. But before that…"
I had to have one answer. I wouldn't be able to let it go until I knew for sure, and once I did, I could start plotting out where and how this Singularity diverged from life as I knew it. I could stop wondering, stop holding onto what I knew was an impossible hope, and face up to the truth of the matter.
"…we're going to take some of Kurt's advice and head to the cemetery."
Arash frowned. "Are you sure?"
No. "Yes."
He let out a short breath, not quite a sigh. "If you think it's what you have to do," he said with reluctant resignation.
"If we find what I think we'll find," what I was afraid we would find, "then it is."
He offered no more protests and didn't try to talk me out of it, and I was glad, because if he'd phrased it the right way, he might just have managed. We left the privacy of the booth and then the karaoke bar itself, ignoring the curious look of the receptionist — a young woman maybe six or seven years older than me — who seemed confused and put out by the fact that we weren't leaving with wrinkled clothes, mussed hair, and flushed faces.
Before we got going again, I made a quick stop at the nearest clothing store and bought myself a plain, black jacket, something that let me hide at least the shirt from my uniform so that I didn't stick out quite so much. Only then did we leave the Boardwalk and find another secluded spot where I could manifest my bike, and Arash climbed onto it behind me again. I allowed myself only a few seconds to take comfort in his presence and in his strong arms around me so that I could better steel myself against what was coming, and then we took off.
We went the whole way to the cemetery. Strictly speaking, I could have sent my ravens on ahead and done my investigation entirely through their eyes. It was probably the smarter way of handling it. But the thought of being so impersonal about it left a sour taste in my mouth, so I didn't stop at the nearest convenient spot within my range and kept going, on through the gate, making sure to slow down as I drove us through the roads that wound through the field of graves.
It had been over four years, but I still remembered where Mom was buried by heart. We went as far as we could on my bike, but eventually, we had to continue on by foot, so I climbed off of it, cut the thread of energy keeping it solid, and stood. Some part of me missed having Arash at my back, but he stayed by my side as we stepped onto the grass and carefully picked our way through the graves.
I hadn't really thought of it that much at the time, but how much history had been lost during Gold Morning, how many people who had been forced to pick up and leave everything behind, including the final mementos of their dead families. Not in this section, but I'd seen gravestones so well worn and so ancient that the dates had been little more than suggestions, vague imprints of 18 and 19 from a hundred years or more ago.
And it had all been lost. I had lost it, back then, my chance to come back to Mom's grave and pay my respects, to just ask her if she would have been proud of me. In that regard…I guess this was something of a blessing in disguise, wasn't it?
It didn't feel like it. With every step, my ankles felt heavier, and the block of dread that had returned to my stomach became larger. Some part of me already knew what I was going to find, but the details mattered, and those… Those, I didn't know for sure.
And again… As long as I didn't face it, that vague hope could still live.
I didn't spoil myself. I didn't look with my ravens, so I didn't look with my bugs either. When the familiar headstone came into view, a slab of dappled gray marble with stark letters and numbers carved into it, it was with my own legs that I crouched down in front of it and my own eyes that I stared at the additions that had been carved into it.
TAYLOR ANNE HEBERT
JUNE 12, 1995 — APRIL 11, 2011
Taken far too soon.?
And above it, next to my Mom's:
DANIEL HEBERT
DECEMBER 2, 1968 — JUNE 12, 2011
He fought the good fight.?
It hit me like a sledgehammer — my birthday. Dad died on my birthday. There was no way. That wasn't a coincidence, it couldn't be. If Dad had died on my birthday, just a few short months after my younger self had, then…
Oh god.
A wave of nausea washed over me like a tsunami, harder than any Leviathan had ever tossed my way, and I surged to my feet, head spinning, and slapped a hand over my mouth as I turned away. But turning away from the headstone didn't change what it said and didn't change the knowledge that came with it, and it did almost nothing to help keep my stomach from rebelling violently against me.
I died. I died fighting Lung, because that was the only thing that made sense with that date. What sort of state my body was in afterwards, I could only guess, but it wouldn't have been pretty and it wouldn't have done any favors for Dad's mental state afterwards. And Dad… Dad would have had nothing left. Mom had taken a chunk out of him when she died, and he had never quite gotten it back, never managed to patch that hole. If he lost me, too…
If he lost me, too…
The ground blurred. The individual blades of grass became a splotchy, messy smear of green, mottled with flecks of brown from the dirt. Searing heat gathered in my eyes and carved molten tracks down my cheeks. My knees wobbled and then gave out, and I fell to them, heaving breaths through my nose.
What would he have left to live for? His wife — dead. His daughter — dead. His dreams for the future of the Dockworkers — dead. Everything that gave him meaning and purpose in the world would have been gone. And without Alan Barnes there to even try to pull him out of his funk, the only thing left for him would have been…been…
I couldn't stop it. My stomach roiled, and I hunched over myself, propped up on trembling arms as my breakfast surged up the back of my throat and splattered all over the ground. Wretched, guilty, miserable, everything that had been festering in my belly came up one heave after another, leaving behind only the terrible, awful truth.
Somewhere in there, a warm hand rested comfortingly on my back, rubbing soothing circles, while another gathered up my hair and held it away from my face and the bile slowly seeping across the soil. I noticed them only distantly, unable to focus on anything else besides the acid burning my throat and tongue and the dizzying lack of air.
An eternity seemed to pass. My stomach emptied itself on the ground what had to be half a dozen times over, until finally, there was nothing left in me but spittle and anguish. I gulped down breaths that tasted vile and disgusting, and the smell alone was nearly enough to make me start heaving again.
I scrambled away from the remains I'd left behind and stumbled over to the next nearest headstone, crouching over it as I struggled to regain my breath. My thoughts continued to swirl — Dad was dead. Dad was dead. He had cared enough, loved me enough, despite it all and despite his failings, that losing me had destroyed him.
This really was my own personal Hell. I'd known, I'd known that it was a possibility from the beginning, but when everything seemed so different, like a snapshot of my life before things had gone to shit and before things really started to spiral, I'd let myself be lulled into a false sense of security. I'd let myself believe that it would be as simple as visiting my childhood home and explaining everything to Dad.
But Dad was dead. Dad was dead and there was no Lisa here to hold me and let me silently grieve. No Rachel to wordlessly nudge one of her dogs towards me, no Alec to distract me with an irreverent joke or some crass commentary. Every part of my old life had just been cut away, and I —
"Mommy?" a small, childish voice said hesitantly, full of concern.
Jackie, and a fresh wave of guilt curdled in my gut, because I'd been so caught up in my own problems that I'd forgotten she was even there with us. I couldn't get the air to respond to her, and my vision was still blurry and indistinct. I didn't even have the presence of mind to reach out with my ravens to see —
A pair of tiny arms wrapped around me, shockingly strong for their size, and pulled on me gently.
"Mommy is hurting," Jackie murmured, "so it's our turn to take care of Mommy."
Something inside of me trembled, then crumbled, and I let her pull me into her embrace, clutching at her tiny shoulders like a lifeline. The floodgates opened, and all of the ugly thoughts and emotions I'd been burying since we found my house empty surged and flowed as I sobbed against Jackie's shirt like a little girl.
Fuck you, Solomon! I howled at the world. The drone of my swarm, buzzing, humming, ripping each other apart with violent savagery, punctuated the thought.
Because he was the one responsible for this. He was the one who made this Singularity, who crafted it the way it was just so that he could fuck me over, who had created this fucked up mess in just the right way to torment me, and even if he hadn't personally twisted every little thing the way it was, it was still his knife that had stabbed me.
The shattered pieces creaked and ground together, forming a new, jagged shape, sharp as a blade and tempered like steel. If Solomon had expected this to break me, then he obviously didn't know nearly as much as he thought he did. If I hadn't had it before, he just handed me all the reason I needed to personally make sure mine was the knife that carved out his heart.
Not a promise. The words floated back to me, solidifying into something with an edge. They resonated. Not a curse or a malediction or an oath. Inevitable.
"No punches pulled" is my motto for this Singularity. None at all. Every bit of emotional weight I can wring from the story, from Taylor, and from you, o readers mine, I'm going to wring. The editor is convinced that quite a few people will be ugly crying several times over the course of this Singularity.
Even I wasn't immune to some of the emotion in these scenes.
So! Some questions got answered this chapter, but there are more that still remain a mystery. There are a bunch of twists and turns we'll be taking in the upcoming chapters, and I honestly can't wait.
"I didn't sign up to be center stage for Godzilla versus Mechagodzilla!"