Pt. 089.a — Day 10 Evelyn Challenge

The first thing Evelyn heard was an evacuation siren, the second was someone screaming.

Her boots struck pavement. Van arrived beside her with a sharp intake of breath. Evelyn caught his wrist before he could stagger into the path of a running security officer.

Cross Dynamics Tower rose beyond the plaza, its familiar silver frontage broken by the red wash of emergency lights. Smoke moved between the buildings across the street. A column of flame had climbed three floors up the side of an office block, and somewhere behind it a heavy impact shook dust from the masonry. The perimeter wall was intact for the moment. Its western gate was open just wide enough to admit a frightened stream of people.

“Oracle!”

A woman in dark security armor was hurrying toward them, one hand pressed to the communicator at her ear. Captain Reyes. Evelyn knew her to be a solid veteran not given to exaggerating an emergency.

“Report,” Evelyn said.

“Multiple breaches east and south. Police are falling back to the municipal line. We have the plaza batteries online, but the outer relays are intermittent. There are still civilians outside the wall.”

“I can see that. How many people inside?”

“Four hundred, possibly five. We opened the lower levels as shelter.” She gestured as she answered, sharp brusque motions to nearby defenders.

“Good. Keep admitting them.” Evelyn never looked at the Captain, instead watching the movements of the chaos around her, measuring. “Medical?”

“Two teams. More coming from upstairs.”

Something sprang onto the overturned bus beyond the wall. It was a narrow, whip-limbed Alter with a tail longer than its torso and claws that scraped sparks from the ruined vehicle. It gathered itself, then launched over the parapet in a blur of dark skin and exposed bone.

Van made a small, startled noise, then blinked at the creature with an expression Evelyn could not place. He looked, absurdly, as though he was trying not to laugh.

Evelyn struck its mind before its feet reached the ground.

The psychic impact met a confusion of hunger, aggression, and violent impulse. She drove through it, forcing its attention inward. The Alter landed badly, one knee buckling beneath it, and lifted its head with a shriek.

Blue-white fire snapped from a turret above the eastern gate. A second battery joined it. Energy pulses hammered the pavement around the creature and struck its shoulders, driving it backward. It twisted, sprang for the wall, and disappeared over the other side as another bolt tore through the place it had been.

“Don’t waste ammo on finishing the things if they flee,” Evelyn told the nearest gunner. “Those batteries are for suppression, not annihilation. Keep them out of here.”

Reyes was already speaking into her radio.

Evelyn looked at the defensive display glowing on the captain's forearm. The perimeter's automated systems could stagger smaller Alters and punish careless approaches. They would not hold against a coordinated assault. Not against the larger breeds she had seen on the regional assessments before her abduction.

“Move the southern shelter queue inside the second security line. I want barriers between the lobby and the courtyard. Open the west service passage for stretcher traffic only. Put a spotter on every intact roofline, and have someone tell the other battery operators not to waste charge on targets beyond the wall.”

“Yes, ma'am.”

“And Reyes—if anything large reaches the gate, close it. No debate. Warn me first if you can.”

The captain's expression tightened. “There'll be people outside.”

“I know.”

Reyes held her gaze for a moment, then nodded and turned away.

Beyond the perimeter someone shouted for help. Another voice answered, farther off, and dissolved into a scream.

Van took one step toward the gate. “Evelyn, there are people out there.”

Her answer was cold. “I heard them.”

“We have to go.”

“Not yet.”

He looked at her as if he hadn't understood. “Someone's getting killed.” He glanced past her. A man outside was pounding on a locked shopfront while someone inside struggled with the shutter. “We can reach them. They're right there.”

“And if this entrance collapses, the people already here will have nowhere to go.” She kept her voice level, though the rising panic beyond the wall made the effort unpleasant. “There are five hundred people behind us, Van. There’s no retreat from this location. We secure their refuge first.”

He glanced toward the entrance, where two guards were supporting an elderly man between them. Then another scream carried over the wall.

“But—”

“Van.”

He stopped.

She could have softened the order earlier. Perhaps she should have. She rested one hand briefly against his arm.

“This is how wars are fought. You preserve what can hold, or you spend all your strength trying to save the first person you hear calling for help. I dislike it as much as you do.”

His jaw worked. He looked toward the gate again, but he stayed with her. When the people at the shutter vanished behind a plume of smoke, he winced but held his complaints. Evelyn kept answering Reyes while a small part of her attention followed the frightened minds beyond the wall. She didn’t have a rescue route for them yet.

Evelyn turned back to Reyes. She checked the shelters, assigned the last reserve team to the western approach, and made sure the medical teams had a protected route into the building. It took scarcely another minute. It felt longer with Van standing at her shoulder.

At last she looked at the captain. “You have the tower.”

“We'll hold it.”

Evelyn took Van's hand and headed for the gate.

His surprise reached her before his words. “This is it, isn’t it?”

“The perimeter is stable enough to survive without me for a little while. Come along.” At the opening she stopped. He nearly walked past her, then caught himself.

“Van. Before we go farther.”

“What?”

“Verena promised protection against a traumatic response. I have considerable doubts about the specificity of her promises. Can you manage this?”

His thoughts fluttered toward the street beyond the gate, then away from something curious. Embarrassment, chiefly. Not the ragged terror she had felt when they approached his memories during training.

“Yeah,” he said. “I'm okay.”

“Are you certain?”

A pause. “It's working. It's just … weird.”

“Weird in what way?”

He looked past her at the burning building. “Can we talk about that when we aren't standing next to a disaster?”

She regarded him for another moment. He was embarrassed, but his attention remained steady. “Yes. Stay close.”

“I will.”

They went out together.

---

The street beyond the wall was worse than it had looked from inside. A delivery van had plowed through a traffic signal. Fragments of glass and plastic covered the sidewalk, and the overturned bus lay crosswise against a line of abandoned cars. An empty stroller rested on its side beneath a shop awning.

Evelyn reached outward, searching for the nearest living minds, and found people hiding in doorways, beneath desks, behind service shutters. Their fear crowded against her senses.

Van kept pace without effort as she led him around the bus. She checked him at each obstruction rather than assume he would follow. Ten meters was more distance than she intended to give the Hotel an opportunity to measure.

A sharp movement caught her eye suddenly. The thin Alter from before came boiling out of the debris at their left, tail whipping against the roadway. It had circled back after the batteries drove it away. One long forelimb rose above Van, claws spread.

Evelyn seized its attention.

The creature's strike lost its coordination. One claw scraped the bus beside Van as the Alter tried to recover, feet shuffling under a body that still wanted to lunge. Evelyn drove psychic static through the part of its mind that organized large movements. It could move; she could feel the intention form and reform. Every time it committed to a direction, the necessary concentration scattered. Its arm jerked up again, then dropped as it struggled to make the motion mean anything.

Another few seconds might have been enough to overwhelm it completely. Then a second mind erupted from behind a wrecked taxi.

“Down!”

This Alter was shorter and heavily hunched, its back ridged with stone-colored spines. It slapped a barbed tail against the ground. Pebbles, broken concrete, and strips of jagged pavement sprang outward in a broad, vicious fan.

Van was directly behind her.

Evelyn turned on instinct, throwing her shoulder between him and the debris.

A dozen impacts struck her back and sides. Fabric tore along her upper arm. Something sharp raked across her ribs and left a ragged slit in the white and silver of her uniform.

There was no pain. She registered the impact and the sound of cloth parting, but the skin beneath remained whole. Ice Queen. One of the Hotel's more unwelcome gifts, proving unexpectedly useful.

Van gasped in response. A few smaller stones had gotten past her, striking his upper arm and shoulder. He reeled, catching himself against her.

A gold-edged notification appeared between them.

MASTER PROTECTION COMPROMISED

Protection Award: 2/3 VP

Evelyn's stomach tightened. The protection award was not simply a reward for bringing him home. A small hit had taken one of its three points. Verena had omitted the increments, and Evelyn had no intention of testing what a heavier blow would cost.

The first Alter stumbled out of the half-formed movement she had trapped it in. The second crouched to lash its tail again.

Evelyn drove her power outward. The effort sent a hot pressure through her temples. She abandoned the fine work of disrupting each creature's movement and struck both minds with an indiscriminate wave of psychic overload. The thorn-backed beast tried to spring sideways. The thin one dragged a claw across the asphalt. Then their confused intentions collapsed beneath the assault, and neither could maintain consciousness.

The thin Alter folded into itself and hit the road. The thorn-backed beast collapsed beside the taxi, its tail giving one last uncontrolled twitch.

Two more notifications flashed.

ALTER DEFEATED

+1 VP

ALTER DEFEATED

+1 VP

Evelyn let out a breath she had not noticed holding.

“Van.”

“I'm all right.” He had already straightened, though one hand was clamped around his upper arm.

She caught his shoulder gently and examined the fabric. No blood. No broken skin. His breathing was faster than before, and something in his expression was distinctly strained.

“Tell me precisely what you felt.”

“Like getting hit with a bunch of very angry sparks.” He flexed his fingers and grimaced. “It went all the way up my arms. It's still there, but it isn’t painful. It’s something else.”

The Hotel's substitutive effect, then. She could sense the unwelcome lust building beneath his reassurance and elected not to investigate it further.

“Can you still concentrate?”

“Yes, Evelyn.”

His insistence had an edge of embarrassment, but he managed a small smile. She released him.

“Very well.” She glanced at the ragged cuts across her own sleeve. “Ice Queen appears to be earning its keep.”

“You're not hurt?”

“Not at all. My tailor would be considerably less pleased.”

Van looked at the long rent across her back, then away again. “For the record,” he said, “I don't think I can take that thing seriously when it yells at me.”

Evelyn looked toward the unconscious Alters. “It nearly tore your arm open.”

“I know they’re dangerous. But the filter makes them look like demented plushies. I can’t even hear their roars. When you hit it, it said 'Owie, that hurt, meanie!'”

She had a great many questions about Verena's judgment. A distant cry rose from beneath a pile of masonry before she could ask any of them, and the faint humor left his face.

Evelyn heard it too.

“Come,” she said.

---

The trapped woman lay beneath the collapsed front of a small pharmacy. A concrete lintel had fallen across a shelving unit, pinning one leg beneath bent metal and plaster. She was conscious, but shock had drawn her thoughts into a frightened loop.

[My leg. My leg. Please don't let it move.]

Evelyn crouched where the woman could see her.

“My name is Evelyn Cross. We're going to get you out.”

The woman's eyes widened. “Oracle?”

“Yes. I need you to remain still while we assess what is holding that beam.”

Van had already moved around the other side of the wreckage. He was peering beneath the fallen shelving, careful not to put his weight on the fractured floor.

“It's the rack,” he said. “The beam's sitting on the back of it. If we pull it straight off, the rest comes down.”

Evelyn followed the line he indicated. He was right. “You lift the near end while I help her get clear.”

Van planted his feet and gripped the shelving. The muscles in his shoulders drew tight beneath his dark uniform. He lifted, not far, but enough to free the woman's leg from the twisted frame. Evelyn eased the woman backward, supporting her knee until the weight was clear. A second later they laid her against an intact section of wall.

“Can you feel your foot?” Evelyn asked.

“Yes.” The woman swallowed. “It hurts.”

“A good sign in the circumstances. You will still need a medic.”

Van pulled a loose piece of board away from the sidewalk and crouched beside her. “The tower's just back that way. There are people at the gate who'll take you inside.”

She looked from Evelyn to him. “Are you Empowered?”

“No,” Van said. “I'm just helping.”

He offered his arm and helped her rise, moving at the speed she could manage.

Evelyn watched him settle the woman's weight against his shoulder. He waited while she caught her breath. The woman stopped looking at the ruined pharmacy and began looking where he directed her.

When a pair of civilians appeared from a side street, Evelyn called them over and sent them back with her. One supported her other arm. They moved toward the plaza at a slow, determined pace. Evelyn waited until the group passed the next corner before resuming her search, with Van at her side.

“She's going to make it,” Van said.

He smiled. Evelyn found herself returning it before she moved deeper into the street.

Beyond the pharmacy, a dozen separate pockets of fear flared in her awareness. A man and his daughter behind the shutters of a bakery. Three people in the upper floor of an office building. A frightened delivery driver hiding beneath his vehicle while two Alters fought police farther down the road.

Evelyn could reach them. Not all at once in the way people imagined her ability worked; a mind was not a radio receiver that accepted instructions merely because she spoke. Panic narrowed attention, and an unfamiliar voice inside one's thoughts could make matters worse.

She began with the father in the bakery.

[This is Oracle. Listen to me. The street outside your rear door is clear. Take your daughter through the service passage, turn right, and keep moving toward Cross Dynamics. Security is waiting.]

His startled response nearly broke her concentration. She steadied him with the calm firmness of her own presence, gave him time to understand, and moved to the next.

A man hiding behind a stalled vehicle needed to be told to stay where he was until the firing ceased. The people upstairs needed to avoid the main staircase, where fire had already spread through the lower landing. An injured police officer needed to know that a shelter was less than two blocks away.

She threaded one route into another, revising directions as the streets changed. Her mind spread across the district in strands of attention, each carrying a voice, an impression, a warning, a clear next step.

The work was difficult. So many frightened people wanted certainty that she could not provide. One woman begged her to find a missing son. A man demanded to know why the heroines had not stopped the attack. Evelyn answered what she could, directed whom she could, and refused to let the unanswered questions pull her away from the living people she could still reach.

“Evelyn?”

Van's voice came from very close beside her.

She opened her eyes. Blue-silver light ran along her gloves and the exposed skin above her collar. Fine luminous lines extended through the smoky air, visible traces of an effort that ordinarily belonged entirely to the mind. The reflections touched broken windows, bent street signs, and the bright fragments of glass beneath their feet.

Van stood at her side, staring.

For an instant she wondered whether the spectacle frightened him. His mind was open with surprise, and she was stretched too widely through the surrounding presences to avoid brushing against it.

Instead she felt wonder.

No calculation followed the wonder. Evelyn was accustomed to catching the next thought - the hope that Oracle might notice them or that Evelyn Cross might. Van's attention held none of it. He had followed her into danger and now regarded her with an affection untroubled by what it might mean to either of them. His impression of her beauty came tangled with admiration for the work itself, for the frightened people she was guiding beyond the smoke.

She caught, too, an unmistakable trace of pride. It was such a private, unguarded thing that she recoiled from having encountered it.

Evelyn withdrew at once. She had not meant to get such an unguarded glimpse of him.

Van was still gazing at the threads of light. “I knew you were powerful,” he said softly. “On paper, I mean. I didn't know it could look like this, helping so many people at once.”

Evelyn had never struggled to speak in from of powerful or influential people, but for a few seconds she could not find a suitable answer to a young man standing beside her in a ruined street.

“Most applications are less decorative,” she said at last.

He laughed under his breath. “I don't think it's the decoration.”

She drew her next breath slowly, then reached back toward the civilians waiting for her directions. Then a violent surge of aggression struck the eastern edge of her awareness.

She turned sharply. “Something is coming through the next intersection. Stay beside me.”

Van looked toward the smoke. “People?”

“Several. And something considerably larger.”

They ran. Evelyn matched Van's pace through the rubble and glanced back whenever he had to change course. She could feel him nearby, but she wanted her eyes on him as well.

---

The Alter occupied most of the intersection. It stood taller than the traffic lights, with heavy shoulders, thick forelimbs, and a back like a moving slab of armored stone. Its head turned from side to side as it tracked a group of civilians stumbling toward the tower. One of them fell. The others were trying to lift him.

Evelyn felt the creature's mind: aggression wrapped around a dense, resistant core. Not clever, perhaps, but deeply difficult to penetrate. The creature's strength was more immediate trouble. The Hotel's substitution would spare their bones, but it scaled with the harm prevented. A strike from something that size could overwhelm Van in a single blow, strip away what remained of the protection award, and end her participation before she could save the people behind the monster.

“Back,” she told Van, drawing him with her rather than sending him away. “Don’t let it touch you.”

He obeyed, though his gaze remained fixed on the civilians.

The Alter wrenched a compact car free of the queue at its feet and hurled it in petulant rage at the gaudy heroes.

Evelyn caught Van's arm and dragged him into a dive behind a concrete planter. The car struck the storefront behind them, burst through its windows, and filled the street with falling brick and metal. She covered her head as fragments rattled against the pavement.

Van rolled onto one knee and saw the civilians were running now. Their fallen companion had regained his footing, but the great Alter had turned toward them.

Van grabbed a fist-sized chunk of broken concrete without thinking.

“Van!”

He threw it with surprising force. The stone struck the creature above one eye. It barely hurt the mighty creature. The Alter turned all the same, enraged by the affront. Van stared up at it with a face that briefly threatened to crack into incredulous laughter.

“Did it just…”

“Run,” Evelyn snapped as the huge head swung toward Van.

Evelyn thrust into the creature's mind, spoiling its attempt to put one massive foot in front of the other. It planted the foot crookedly and corrected, shaking its head. She pushed harder against the concentration behind the next step; the creature lumbered through the interference anyway, its aggression an almost bottomless source of new intent.

“Oh, damn it.”

She seized Van's wrist and pulled him across the street, away from the fleeing civilians.

“What can we do?” he demanded.

“Keep moving.”

“That wasn't an answer.”

“I'm already doing it. Keep up.”

They circled away from the route to the tower, drawing the Alter toward an empty service road. A row of concrete loading bays lined one side; on the other stood a low garage whose upper windows had already shattered. There was no civilian traffic in either direction. Evelyn had checked mentally before committing them to the turn.

Van was faster than she had expected, but she refused to gain ground by leaving him behind. When she ducked around the first loading ramp she waited the fraction of a second needed for him to clear it too. Ten meters: too little room for a reckless sprint, too much for her to calculate while the Alter was bearing down on them.

A claw smashed the roadway behind them. The blow broke the curb and punched a shallow trench through the asphalt. Van jumped aside, close enough that Evelyn felt his alarm flare against her senses.

“Left,” she said, pointing toward an abandoned municipal truck angled across the service road. “Keep its attention away from the plaza.”

They veered around the truck. The Alter struck its cargo compartment rather than them. Metal folded with a screech, and the vehicle lurched against the curb, blocking the lane they had just used.

For an instant Van was on the far side of the wreck. Evelyn checked her own momentum and reached back. He appeared around the crumpled rear corner and caught her outstretched hand.

“Still here,” he said breathlessly.

The Alter shouldered through the ruined truck, sending a wheel bouncing against the garage door. Evelyn attacked its sense of movement again. The creature's next stride came too late and too wide, but it recovered with a furious sweep of one arm. They ducked under the arc and stumbled into the open portion of the road.

The sustained effort was beginning to hurt. Evelyn could arrest a decision for a heartbeat, disrupt the coordination of a limb, make the creature reconsider where to plant its feet. She could not make it turn around and walk away, and it was too mentally resilient for the sudden collapse she had inflicted on the smaller Alters.

She spared one thin thread of attention for the distant mind she had contacted while guiding civilians. Through that connection came a clear impression of movement above the rooftops. Close, but not close enough.

Van drew alongside her, breathing hard. He didn’t see the message passing through her mind; he saw only the monster gaining on them.

“We're running out of street,” he said.

“I am aware.”

At the next corner the Alter's fingers closed around a streetlight. Its base held for a moment before the bolts sheared away. Evelyn felt Van begin to pull back and tightened her grip, keeping him beside her as the long metal pole swung free.

“Evelyn, it's got reach now!”

“I know.”

Loose wiring snapped from the streetlight's broken base, and the lamp head struck the road with a harsh metallic crack.

“We can't outrun that.”

“We won't have to.”

She stopped near the center of the empty road. Van skidded beside her, still within reach of her hand.

“What are you doing?”

The Alter advanced, dragging its improvised club. The broken lamp scored a white line across the asphalt, then rose toward the sky. Evelyn could see how little distance remained between them. Another three strides would put both of them beneath the sweep.

She planted her feet and gathered what remained of her concentration. She could barely hold the movement center of the creature's mind against her assault, but if she gave it a problem it had to solve, its attention might stay on her for the few seconds she needed.

Her attack made the Alter lose its grip on the pole for an instant. It caught the metal again, adjusted its stance, and fought to lift it. Evelyn pressed harder. Pain flared behind her eyes. Its thoughts struck back in hot, incoherent waves, forcing her to grit her teeth against the pressure.

“Evelyn!” Van's hand closed over hers. “You have to do something! Move!”

“Yes,” she managed, “I am doing something. I'm distracting it!”

A streak of prismatic light crossed the rooftops.

It struck the Alter in the side of the head with enough force to turn the creature's entire body. The pole swung wide, smashing through an empty bus shelter as the monster staggered.

A woman hung in the air beside its shoulder, pale hair streaked with blue highlights whipping behind her. Brilliant planes of hard light encased her body in angular armor. From her back spread enormous wings, not feathers but layered luminous blades that refracted the burning city's light into shifting colors.

Seraph.

“Tessa,” Evelyn said, the relief in her voice plain beneath her apparent fearlessness.

“Got your directions, Oracle.”

Tessa drove forward. The edge of one extended wing sharpened into a glittering blade and cut through the raised streetlight. The upper half spun away and crashed into the roadway.

The Alter roared and swung its remaining length of metal. Seraph caught the blow against her armored forearm, her light flaring with the impact. Then she drove the point of one wing into its chest and forced it back another step.

Evelyn released her psychic hold. Her head throbbed, and the sudden absence of resistance was almost dizzying.

“It's unusually resistant,” she called. “I couldn't put it down. Don't give it room to swing.”

“Understood.”

Tessa's wings folded inward, forming a bright shield as the creature lunged again.

That was enough. Seraph was built to survive the kind of punishment Evelyn could only evade. She could occupy the monster while the remaining defenders converged.

“Thank you,” Evelyn said.

“Get your people clear.”

Evelyn took Van's hand. “Come.”

He looked once over his shoulder. “She's going to be okay?”

“She has better odds than we did. And she knows what she's doing.”

They left Seraph to her fight.

---

They didn’t make a straight run back. At the corner of a damaged municipal building, a man was trying to push his mother's wheelchair over a fallen section of railing. Van helped him lift the chair while Evelyn checked the side street for threats. A little farther on, she stopped a pair of teenagers from crossing beneath an unstable sign and directed them around the rear of a warehouse.

She kept her mental reach narrow now. The long effort had left a stubborn ache behind her eyes, and the distant clash of Seraph's battle continued to carry through the streets.

Van glanced at her as they passed the overturned bus. “That last one,” he said. “Was he dangerous looking?”

“He is an Alter, so he was viscous and strong.”

“Right. Because it looked like a mountain of stuffed wool to me. A really angry one. It yelled, 'I am big and scary!' when I threw the rock.”

She spared him a look. “I suspect that memory will stay with you.”

“I still knew it could crush us,” he said quickly.

“I know you did.” She studied the street ahead. “I shall have words with Verena about the aesthetic choices later.”

“Are we going back out after more?”

“No.”

He looked surprised. “There are still Alters out there.”

“Yes. And several heroines better suited to fighting them.”

“But you took those first two down.”

“Small, comparatively vulnerable targets. Even those nearly cost you another hit.” She glanced at his shoulder. “The larger ones are beyond what I should engage alone. If we returned to hunt them, we would eventually become another emergency for Tessa and the others to solve.”

He was quiet as they approached the gate. “I wanted to help,” he said at last.

“You did help. You gave those people time to get clear.” She kept her eyes on the plaza ahead. “If that club had struck you, the substitution might have overwhelmed you outright. Whatever Verena has spared us, she hasn't made recklessness cheap.”

He accepted that without argument.

Evelyn squeezed his hand once before releasing it to signal the guards. “The difficult part is knowing when you've done what you can.”

The gate opened. Inside the perimeter, the shelters had expanded across the lower plaza. Security personnel carried stretchers to and from. Someone had brought blankets out of the building. The automated batteries still tracked the streets, but the distant fighting had moved farther away.

Captain Reyes met them just beyond the threshold. “Tower's holding,” she reported. “Another medical team came down. We're short of hands.”

“You can have ours,” Evelyn said.

Van was already looking toward a nurse who was trying to maneuver a stretcher around a row of chairs.

“Come with me,” she told him. “We'll work this side of the triage station. We are still under the distance restriction.”

He helped the nurse turn the stretcher while Evelyn cleared a route to the nearest open bed. For the next hour they worked among the injured, moving together between a handful of treatment spaces.

Evelyn sorted the worst cases, lent her concentration to panicking patients who could not understand what the medics were telling them, and helped Reyes redirect the stream of arrivals as the streets gradually became safer.

Van carried supplies between the nearby beds, fetched water from the station behind Evelyn, guided the walking wounded into empty chairs, and sat with people who needed someone to listen while they recovered enough to speak coherently.

More than once Evelyn heard someone ask him whether he was Empowered.

“No,” he told a boy whose bandaged wrist rested against his chest. “I'm just someone trying to help.”

“Then why are you dressed like a hero?”

Van glanced down at his dark uniform. “This,” he asked, tugging at the shirt. “I lost a bet.”

The boy considered that. “You were out there with the monsters?”

“Yeah.”

“Were you scared?”

Van looked toward the open gate, where distant flashes still lit the smoke. “Very,” he said.

The boy nodded as though that settled something important.

A woman with a bruised face and breathing in ragged gasping breaths caught Van's sleeve as he rose and asked whether her sister had been found. He had to tell her he didn’t know and he sat with her a while, until she started breathing more evenly.

Evelyn watched him work with the victims. He kept calm and kept them moving before their panic could drown them. But she sensed his own anxiety, reality filter or no. He was soaked in old memories and familiar fear.

Near the end of the hour he returned carrying two cups of water.

“Thought you might need this,” he said.

“I do.” She accepted one. “Thank you.”

He stood beside her in the shelter's crowded entrance, drinking and watching a guard help an elderly man find his family.

“How's your arm?” she asked.

“Still distracting. Not painful.” A faint flush reached his face. “I really don't want to explain the details.”

She tried to avoid sensing his arousal, but it was so incongruous in a place crowded with fear and pain that she couldn’t completely ignore it. “Don’t worry, Van. It isn’t you, it’s something Verena did to you.”

He looked at her with open gratitude.

She could have teased him. In different circumstances she might even have enjoyed doing so. Instead she drank her water and let him keep the small privacy he had asked for.

A familiar gold border appeared in the air before them.

CHALLENGE COMPLETE

ALTERS DEFEATED: 2

MASTER PROTECTION: 2/3 VP

TOTAL AWARDED: 4 VP

Evelyn studied the numbers.

Four points. She read the protection line again, remembering the stones that had slipped past her shoulder. Then she dismissed the screen and turned back toward the occupied beds.

Van leaned close enough to read the display. “Four. Is that good?”

“It is what we earned.”

He glanced toward the rows of cots. “They didn't count any of this.”

“No, they didn’t.”

“That seems wrong.”

“It is.”

She looked at him then. His hair was damp with sweat, a gray streak of dust crossed one cheek, and the reinforced shoulder of his uniform bore a white scrape where a stone had struck. He was tired. So was she. Neither of them had managed to make the city's disaster into anything resembling a neat victory.

“Van,” she said. “You did well today.”

He seemed ready to deflect the compliment. She could feel the reflex forming before he opened his mouth.

“I mean it,” she added. “Not only in the street. Here.”

His expression changed. “Thanks. You were amazing out there.”

Evelyn lowered her empty cup. For once she let his compliment stand without correction. Then she reached for his hand. He looked down as her fingers closed around his, then back up at her. She did not release him.

Around them the shelter continued its work, full of wounded people, tired voices, and the small determined sounds of a city refusing to fall quiet.

Evelyn kept hold of his hand until the light came for them.