Chapter Twenty-Two

Tension at home

Before she was Elara Voss, my mother had been Elara Hale. The farm was hers before it was ours. The Hales had worked that patch of Texas for generations, long enough that old fence posts from previous versions of the property still surfaced whenever we dug deeply enough. Mom grew up there, learned the wells, the pasture lines and which parts of the creek flooded first. Her parents were gone by the time Kira and I were born. A coyote-hybrid attack had killed them when Mom was already an adult, leaving her the house, the land and more work than one person had any sensible reason to keep. She kept it anyway.

Dad entered the story because something broke. According to Mom, it was the old irrigation pump. According to Dad, it was a crime against mechanical engineering that had somehow continued operating through stubbornness alone. John Voss had been passing through, saw Mom swearing at an open pump housing beside the road and made the fatal mistake of asking whether she needed help. He fixed it. Then he found three other things that needed fixing. Then he came back the following week with a replacement bearing he'd supposedly "forgotten" to install. Mom always rolled her eyes when she told that part. Dad stayed.

Years later, when I learned enough about machines to understand the original pump, I discovered the bearing he'd returned with wasn't even necessary. That was my father.

Mom stared at me now in the driveway of that same farm, tears still on her face, trying to reconcile the daughter she'd lost with the woman standing in front of her.

Elara: "Leona... what happened to you?"

There were approximately six hours of explanation hiding inside that question. We didn't have six hours. I stepped closer and took her hands.

Leona: "Mom, I will explain everything. The facility, the serum, me, Kira getting tranquilized, all of it. I promise."

Her eyes moved over my face again.

Elara: "Serum?"

Leona: "Later."

Elara: "Leona—"

Leona: "Mom."

That stopped her. I rarely used that voice with her.

Leona: "We need to pack."

She blinked.

Elara: "Pack?"

Leona: "Food, water, medicine, documents, clothes, fuel, tools. Anything important that fits in the vehicles. Nothing heavy unless we actually need it."

Her confusion became fear.

Elara: "Why?"

I looked back toward the road. Nothing was visible yet. That didn't matter.

Leona: "Because Arcadia wasn't empty."

I gave her the short version. Project Chimera. The Matriarch. Twenty-eight years underground. Regeneration. Psychic effects. Asexual reproduction. Thousands of offspring. The containment system failing while I was inside. The swarm already reaching the surface before I'd escaped. Mom's face slowly lost what little color it had.

Elara: "The Authority is there."

Leona: "I know."

Elara: "Then they'll contain it."

There it was. That old reflex. The same one I'd grown up watching. Authority had arrived, therefore Authority would solve it. Somebody trained had taken responsibility, therefore the rest of us were supposed to follow instructions and wait. A month earlier I might have argued with her. Now I'd seen the thing under Arcadia.

Leona: "No."

Mom stared at me.

Elara: "Leona—"

Leona: "I watched the containment field drop from seventeen percent to almost nothing. I watched her children find routes around it. I watched them flood the corridors faster than armed GHCA teams could kill them."

I pointed toward the truck.

Leona: "The people they sent for one runaway rabbit were already dying when I left. Reinforcements are coming, but they're reacting to something they learned existed less than an hour ago. The Matriarch has had twenty-eight years to reproduce."

Mom swallowed.

Elara: "S-Class?"

Leona: "At least."

That did it. Mom understood Danger Ranks. Everyone did.

Leona: "Maybe the Authority kills her tonight. Maybe they build a perimeter and this becomes somebody else's problem by tomorrow. I would love that."

I shook my head.

Leona: "But I'm not betting you and Kira on it."

Elara looked toward the house. Her house. Her parents' house. The farm Dad had wandered onto because of a broken pump and never really left. Leaving wasn't a small request. I knew that.

Elara: "Where would we go?"

Leona: "Farther east first. Somewhere populated enough that evacuation routes exist and far enough from Arcadia that we have time to think."

Elara: "And the farm?"

I looked at the porch, the barn beyond it, the fences, the equipment, all the ordinary pieces of a life that had survived Dad's death, Mom and Kira becoming lamias, bad harvests, repairs, bills and me becoming a rabbit.

Leona: "The farm can't die."

Mom looked at me.

Leona: "We can."

That was cruel. Necessary, but cruel. Her expression tightened. Then she nodded. Once.

Elara: "How much time?"

I glanced west. The faint pressure at the back of my mind hadn't disappeared.

Leona: "Assume none."

Mom wiped her face with both hands. When she lowered them, she looked different. Still frightened. But moving.

Elara: "I'll get the documents and medicine."

Leona: "I'll handle tools, food and fuel. Kira can handle being unconscious."

From the truck came a faint, offended noise.

Kira: "...fuck you..."

Mom froze. I smiled.

Leona: "She's recovering."

For the first time since she'd seen me, Mom almost laughed. Then we went inside and started packing our lives into boxes.