~———————~

The light slants low, red through thinning leaves. Damp earth and the sharp edge of fallen acorns crunch under the tires as we pull off the road. This place will do. The air carries nothing but soil and leaf-mold, which is the only scent we trust now. Marcus, with his senses, is quick to veto any smoke or ash smell whenever we scout. Better to stay hungry than risk being on the trail of someone else’s fire.

James unloads the bundle of wood and kneels at the pit. His palm presses flat against the dirt. The top layer softens, then rises, forming a shallow ring. He digs a narrow cut in the side, a drain to carry off rain should it come in the night. “The edges will hold if rain comes,” he says, matter-of-fact, brushing soil from his knuckles. He has done this at all our stops, and it is old hat for him now.

Mio lifts her hands and the first threads of mist gather from the hollow beyond, pulled in from the air. She steps lightly, almost dancing, shoulders loose as if she can hear music none of us can. The wall thickens where she gestures, a veil spun out of air and patience. She has named it Mist Dancer, and the name has stuck.

“Danielle, left,” she calls. “Selena and Marcus, right. Pull it when I tell you.”

Marcus smirks. “Gentle, as always.”

“Gentle enough,” Danielle says. Her tone is sharp, not unkind, already pulling her weight into the wall.

Angela circles the surrounding treeline, coaxing branches into cover, weaving brambles where the light might otherwise spill. She moves on once the shapes hold, content to let the plants do the rest.

Selena steadies at her side of the veil, hands raised. Her fog is thin but steady, the same kind Danielle and Marcus can manage around Mio’s fuller wall of fog. She has three teachers, and it shows. Her push blends cleanly into the larger wall. Learning from others instead of fumbling through each step alone has made the work come faster to her. Or perhaps her age has something to do with it.

It was not always so. Earlier in the week she startled us by managing the fog on her own, pulling a low veil across the ground and holding it there longer than before. It reminded me of Mio’s first attempts with Mist Dancer, before shaping the mist became as natural to her as moving through it. Selena is still learning the simpler pieces, but she watches her mother closely. I find myself wondering whether she will eventually follow the same path, or discover something of her own.

I catch Liora at the edge of my sight, arms folded tight, palms flexing like she means to drag light from them by force. Nothing comes. She has only me to guide her, and I have learned too much in silence to make an easy teacher. What I do feels simple now, but simple after a decade is never simple to explain. The first steps are hard to recall once they are long behind you. Selena is coached by three new voices at once, a harmony she can fall into. Liora has no such advantage. She looks for the same chorus and finds only my pauses while I am thinking.

“Fog is boring,” she mutters, low enough she thinks I will not hear.

“You will have your own place,” I tell her. “What begins dim can be built into something brighter.”

She glances at me, uncertain. I remember my own first sparks. Weak, flickering, a candle guttering in a wind. Others at the lab began much the same. Her difficulty tells me little about what she may become. For now, patience will have to serve where my teaching does not.

To ease her frustration, I give her smaller steps. A glint to mark a stone edge. A shimmer laid across bark so it shines pale in the dark. Focusing on one object until its details stand clearer than those around it. She listens, tries, fails, then tries again. Too many options only seem to frustrate her more. Her hands twitch like a fledgling beating wings against air that will not yet hold her weight.

The veil around the campsite creeps toward a stone outcrop. I see Mio doing her dance, with Marcus and Selena pushing the fog she is making around on one side. Danielle, on the other, sets her palm against the air and pushes, guiding the mist tight to the rock ledge. Her brow knots. She presses harder. The mist does not seem to move.

The sound comes suddenly. A low hum rises from the ground near Danielle, sharp enough to set my teeth on edge. All of us duck in response. The rock face shivers and splits, a clean fracture running shoulder-high. Chips scatter to the leaves. The mist drops away from her hands, unraveling into the cold air.

Selena steps in behind her mother’s shoulder, alert. Marcus swears and half-raises his arms. James steps forward, then halts, measuring the crack with his eyes. “Stay back,” Angela warns, firm and clear. “No one near it.”

Danielle stares at her own hand. “That… I’m pretty sure that was me,” she says, the words flat at first, then rising with equal parts wonder and unease.

Selena edges closer. “Should I try?”

“Not with stone,” Mio cuts in. Her tone is soft but final.

“It felt like a note,” Danielle says, flexing her fingers. “I pressed to hear it better, and the rock… sang back?”

Marcus exhales hard. “Warn me next time before the encore.”

Danielle shoots him a look, half a smile, half a warning. “Better now than when someone is standing in front of it.”

James crouches near the rubble, careful not to touch. “It’s stable,” he says. “It’s not going to fall more.”

Angela folds her arms. “We need rules for this. Distance. Warnings when dealing with odd experiences. No playing with stone close close to us sleeping. That’s not a wake-up alarm I want.”

Mio steadies the veil again, as if nothing happened. “Rules will come. We were all surprised by our abilities at first,” she says, voice calm. “For now, now she has some idea what she can do.” She turns to me. “Gabriel, is this another shared ability thing? Or is this just hers?”

I pause. Some abilities at the lab many of us had, some were unique. We have seen enough of that among our own abilities. Others are more personal, like Mio’s veil or my truth vision. The lab showed me far stranger variations than either, but after so many years I remember the shapes of those gifts more readily than the names we gave them.

“I do not recall anyone doing this,” I say. “Someone may have tried something like it once, but I do not think so. It feels more like her own ability than a shared one.”

Danielle lowers her hand, exhaling with a smile. The crack gapes behind them, silent, the fog veil drifting back across it. “Come on. Back to pushing the veil. We need to finish this,” Mio says, nudging her. “Plenty of time to experiment later.”

I close the map on my knee. Fatigue runs under the camp like a current, but so does awe. A new voice has joined the circle tonight, and the ground itself seems to have spoken for her. We do not speak of it further. The work shifts instead to fire and food, the ordinary tasks that hold us steady.

The flames catch slowly. Marcus leans close now and again, guiding a narrow current through the embers. When smoke begins to gather, he curls the rising air back through the hottest part of the fire until most of it burns away. It is not perfect, but little escapes above the veil to betray us. We sit close, knees near to knees, the circle tighter than the mist. Heat works into our hands, and for the first time since we stopped, there is no sound but the crack of bark.

I feel a faint change stirs the air, cool and damp. Marcus tilts his head as if listening to something beyond our campsite. He says nothing though. The fire snaps again, too bright against the encroaching dark.

Selena pulls a rabbit from her pack, threadbare, one ear half gone. She rests it in her lap, thumb finding the frayed seam. “It still smells like the old house,” she says.

Mio touches the rabbit’s head. “It was my mother’s. She carried it when she was a girl. Now it keeps us.”

Marcus leans to see it. “That thing has seen more miles than I have.”

Mio answers without looking up. “It is older than you too.”

His grin twitches. “Fair.”

The talk rolls on in fragments. Someone recalls the bleach sting of chlorine from a summer pool. James mentions pizza from a shop outside town, the kind where the cheese scalded your mouth but you ate anyway.

Marcus lifts his hands like a stage announcer. “And unfinished anime. Cliffhangers forever. My life’s greatest tragedy.”

Angela gives him a look. “Greatest?”

He shrugs. “Top five, at least.”

The laughter is sudden, too loud for the circle, sharp in the still air. For a moment it startles more than the crack of stone had earlier. Liora laughs louder than the rest, bright and unguarded, while Selena turns the rabbit to hide a smile.

The sound ebbs, and in the hush Mio begins to hum. Low, then higher, a tune that folds into words I do not know. Japanese, a lullaby her mother taught her I remember when the girls were little. The twins settle into it without question. The rest of us lower our heads, the way one does when prayer is offered even if the god is not yours.

I watch the firelight trace her face. It casts her in a glow that belongs to another world, one I fear the children will only know in fragments. The rabbit. The taste of pizza. A song in a language they may never learn.

They will not hold as facts. They will drift into story. Myths of a lost age, carried forward until no one remembers if they were true. Like the tales of gods among men before the flood, shaped by half-memory and need. Some were stories of my older siblings, gone and already ancient by the time the rest of us were brought here.

Danielle cracking the rock turns the conversation back toward the other ways their bodies have changed. Mio rubs at her arm. “My old scars are still gone. That hasn’t changed. The healing has slowed since those first weeks, but it’s still faster than it used to be. A cut that once took days might be gone in hours.”

James nods. “That gash last week was gone by morning. Before, I’d have needed stitches.”

Angela rests her hand on her stomach, smiling. “It eases other things too. Aches fade in hours. Even carrying Nathaniel feels lighter than it probably should be. It’s not the same as it was at the start, but I’ll take this. I expected these later months to be painful, especially in our situation, but it’s like my body has adjusted.”

“The most I could’ve done before was a week of camping,” James says. “It’s been months, and sleeping on a bag still hasn’t wrecked my back.”

Marcus pokes the embers with a stick. “Perfect skin. I had it once.” Danielle smacks him on the shoulder. He knows why. “Already ruined it with a burn.” He nods with exaggerated seriousness. “Could’ve been a lot worse. With how fast we heal now, all it left was this faint scar.”

Danielle shakes her head, smiling as she gave him the smack. “Better that than one of us testing things on purpose.”

The fire pops, and the circle settles. Mio looks across at the others. “What about the children still out there? We’ve watched this plague tear through everyone old enough to face it. But the ones who grow up after it’s gone won’t have to live through that. They won’t have to watch people their age start dying around them.” She pauses. “They’ll just be normal children. Physically, at least.”

A cool draft brushes the camp. Marcus briefly pulls my attention as he tilts his head. “Heavy rain coming. Not yet but soon…” More to himself than anyone else.

Angela shifts her eyes toward the twins, then back to the fire. “The twins aren’t like everyone else though. They got sick too, but lived thought it when no one else did. No cure. But also no drawn-out suffering like we and everyone had. Was something different.”

Selena holds the rabbit close. “I was so thirsty for days. For a while, I thought I couldn’t drink enough.”

Liora leans on her knees. “When I woke up, the daylight was so bright it hurt my eyes. I’m so glad that went away.”

Angela nods, her voice gentler now. “Yes. It wasn’t what we went through, but it was frightening in its own way.”

James rests his chin on his hand. “So three situations, maybe. Us, who were cured. Kids who outlast this and grow up without ever getting sick. And the twins, who fell sick and got better without help.”

I watch Selena cradle her rabbit close, Liora scratching idle shapes in the dirt with a stick. They do not remember the worst of it, only what we told them. Still, they carry it in ways we cannot guess. The fact they have abilities is proof they went through whatever this process is, even if unique to them. A thought presses at the back of my mind, unfinished, not ready. I leave it alone.

The sparks drift up and vanish. Curiosity hangs with us. We are still learning what they are now, and no one is ready to stop asking.

The first drops splatter into the fire. James is already moving to pull packs under cover. Angela drags blankets back from the edges. It is the rhythm of camp life. Rain means scramble.

Then the squall hits full force. Rain slams down hard enough to drown the fire in seconds.

Marcus bolts upright. He throws his arms wide, and the downpour bends. The sheet of water splits, curling into a rough wall that arcs around us. For a moment it feels like we are inside a glass dome, water racing down its sides while the fire flickers untouched. The rippling ceiling waves like tent fabric in the wind.

“Marcus!” Danielle shouts, half under the curve of it. “What are you doing?”

He grits his teeth, shoulders tight. “Soon as the rain hit me, I just knew it would work. I had to try.”

We all pause at the water cascading across and down. The wall of rain around us wavers. A patch tears open in the ceiling, and rain crashes through, soaking James from shoulder to boot. Marcus shifts his hands, and the hole closes. James swears and stumbles back, dripping. More gaps open around us, Marcus trying to close them as fast as he can. Another breaks near Danielle; she yelps as water sheets across her arm before Marcus forces it closed again. His whole frame shakes with the effort, like he is holding a huge rock above his head.

Selena steps forward, curious. She raises her hand toward the curtain and pushes. The rain in front of her splits, opening like a slit in fabric. For a second there is a dry stripe, then more drops fall straight through, filling it again. She laughs at the sight, delighted she could move it at all. The adults look at each other, in slight confusion.

Danielle tries the same, shoving out with her palm as she concentrates. A sweep of falling water bends away from her, opening a narrow gap before the rain closes over it again. Mio tests it next, pushing another section aside with much the same result. Between them, they can split the falling water and shove it out of the way for a moment, but none of them can keep the space clear as the water falls down.

Selena beams, proud of her push. Liora just stands close by, letting the water beat against her palm like a waterfall, laughing as it splashes around her fingers.

“Marcus,” James calls, pointing at the ground where water is pooling fast. “Keep it out of camp if you can please.”

Marcus shakes his head, jaw set. “I can push it in the air. Once it’s down though, I can’t affect it. It’s hard enough concentrating on this.” His voice cracks under the strain as he patches another hole.

Danielle kneels, setting her hand to the soil. A low tremor splits the ground. James presses his palm flat, guiding the loosened earth aside. Together they carve quick trenches, pulling the runoff away from bedding and fire.

Marcus holds his arms high, straining like a man keeping a roof beam from falling. His face is pale, his shirt plastered to him, but the dome stays.

The rain hammers for a few minutes more, then begins to ease to a light mist. The walls collapse in streams as Marcus slumps back onto the log he had been using earlier, chest heaving. The fire smolders but holds, and bedding stays dry enough.

He tips his head back, dragging in air between words. “Well… call it progress. Maybe next time I’ll keep James dry too.” He grins, water running down his face. “Maybe Dani if she’s nice. Good to know I am not just the comic relief anymore.”

A ripple of laughter passes the circle, thin but real. Beneath it sits the weight of what he has done. He is exhausted and soaked, but proud. Mio can feel the movement of the air too, though Marcus has always found it easier. Some of what they can do overlaps. This does not. Like Danielle with the stone, Marcus has found something that seems to be his alone.

No one speaks at first. The twins press close, wide-eyed. The rest of us trade glances across the circle. The scramble for cover is forgotten. Marcus has made the storm itself bend, even if only for a moment.

I find myself counting without intent. James with the movement of the earth. Angela coaxing life into plants themselves. Mio with her fog dancing. Danielle with shattering of stone. Myself holding to the light’s truth. Now Marcus with the rain in the sky itself. All six of us carry something. What once felt like fragments or accidents now has shape.

It reminds me of the days in the lab, when we first explored these abilities, joy cutting through the grief of so much death. I only hope the dread that followed then does not find us again.

And my children seem to follow us in smaller ways. Selena pulling fog, now nudging water. Liora’s hands sparking with light though she cannot yet hold it steady. They are echoes of us as we were early on, faint but certain. The pattern does not seem to stop with us.

~———————~

The camp settles in fits and starts. Damp clothes are hung near the fire. Blankets are pulled tight. The twins drift off first, curled together in their tent. Mio lingers, touching my shoulder as she passes.

“Come to bed,” she says, her voice low.

“Not yet,” I answer. “I need time to think.”

She studies me a moment longer, then nods. “Don’t stay long. You’re my heater,” she says with a slight smirk. She disappears into the tent, the fabric closing soft behind her.

I remain by the fire until the circle stills. One by one their breathing finds rhythm. The crack of wood is the only sound left. Even then I wait longer, listening, watching, until I am certain.

The knife rests near my pack. I lift it and weigh it in my hand. The steel is clean, the edge sharp. I know what I intend and still hesitate.

Thoughts circle in me. Danielle breaking stone. Marcus bending rain. The others heal faster than humans ever did before, wounds closing now with something close to the speed my own always have. The cure did more than save them from the plague. It gave them abilities, and it changed how quickly their bodies repair themselves. I already know it changed me too.

What I have never questioned is whether it changed that part of me as well.

I think of the lab, of the blast, of everyone else dying even with this enhanced healing, while I survived outside its center. For years, I have assumed distance and the healing I already possessed were enough to explain it. Even so, the explosion nearly killed me, but my body seemingly recovered as it always had. Now, listening to the others describe what the cure did to their healing, that explanation no longer feels quite as complete.

Knowing I can test the thought is more unsettling than the uncertainty.

I step back to the edge of the fog veil surrounding the camp careful not to alert Mio to it. The fire glows faint behind me, its light a muted pulse in the mist. Here the night feels larger, more private, though I am still within the cover we set.

I draw the blade across my forearm. The line is clean and deep, the kind that should demand stitches and weeks of recovery for normal people. Hours at least for one of us if properly treated.

It heals even as I watch. Not instantly, but swift enough that the edges pull together before the blood can pool fully. In less than a minute the wound is gone, the skin smooth and unbroken. The only proof is a few drops of blood spattered on the ground and clinging to the steel.

I wipe the blade and stare at my arm. Marcus already carries a faint scar from his burn. I carry nothing. Not one blemish.

The weight of it settles on me. I was always different, set apart, but this is something else. Even now, among the blessed.

I think of my daughters. Will their bodies heal this way? Will they carry the same endurance? And Adrian. He began with the same resilience I did. If the cure has sharpened that in him as it has in me, what could ever stop him?

I do not wish to kill my brother, but I cannot ignore how the others might see this if they knew. To live beside someone who may require extraordinary violence simply to put down is a hard trust to carry. And with Adrian, it would be two of us they have to decide about. Shield or threat, protector or tyrant. What would they decide we were?

I clean the blade and slide it back into its sheath. Mio’s words from before return to me, her quiet insistence that I need not carry every burden alone. I know what she would say if she saw the blood on the steel. Still, I leave the fog veil without waking her. The fire cracks in the distance, steady and unaware. I still choose to carry this one alone.

I slip back into the tent and settle beside Mio. She shifts toward the warmth without waking, one hand finding my arm before going still again. Sleep does not come easily. My thoughts keep returning to the wound, to Adrian, to everything I have not told her. Eventually exhaustion wins.

The first cry rips through the dark, sharp enough to bring me upright before I am awake. My hand finds the knife by instinct. Attack, danger, something coming through the fog.

The second cry follows, lower, raw with strain. Not fear. Pain. Angela.

I set the knife down and pull on my coat. Mio is already leaning up, checking on the twins with a mother’s practiced hand. Their breathing is even, still deep in sleep. She looks at me with a sigh and nods. “Go. I’ll be there soon.”

The fog veil has thinned with hours of neglect, patchy now, but it still muffles the forest beyond, and with luck, us from it. The gray of pre-dawn pushes faint against the mist as I cross to James and Angela’s tent.

I stop at the flap. “It is Gabriel,” I call low. “I am coming in. Forgive me if anyone is not decent.”

Inside, James is crouched by Angela’s side, eyes wide, hands clumsy as she grips him hard. Sweat beads on her brow despite the cold, her face tight as another wave of pain rolls through.

“This is private,” James blurts, voice cracking, but before the protest can gather weight Mio slips in behind me, calm as ever.

“James,” she says, steady and firm. “We spoke of this before. You agreed.”

Angela gasps and leans into James’s arm. “He’s seen this. He’s helped with this a thousand times.” Her breath shudders. “Let him.”

James falters. There is no ground left to stand on. He nods, silent.

I kneel opposite him. “You stay with her. She will need you steady. Breathe with her. Speak to her. Do not be quiet.” I meet his eyes until he nods again.

Angela cries out, clutching James’s shirt. He looks stricken. I guide him as I would any father. “She is strong. You are not watching her break. You are watching her endure. Hold her hand. Remind her she is not in this alone.”

For a moment James tries, awkward and halting. “I… I am here, Angie. I’m here.”

Another contraction takes her. Mio moves quickly, setting a damp cloth to Angela’s forehead, her voice low and sure. James stares, half in awe, half helpless, then blurts, “Never did I expect I’d miss those Lamaze classes.” His laugh is brittle, but it breaks the tension. Angela lets out a ragged chuckle between gasps.

The tent air thickens with breath and heat. Too many bodies crowd close. I wave Marcus and Danielle out. “Fetch water. Bring the fire back. This is still early. Let us give them space.”

The flap opens a crack a few moments later. The twins peer in, hair wild, eyes heavy with sleep. Selena rubs at her face and slumps against Liora’s shoulder. “Baby time?” Liora shifts to hold her up, looking considerably more awake.

Angela manages a tight smile through her breath. “Yes, little one. It’s time.”

Danielle ducks in behind them, firm but gentle as she turns them both by the shoulders. “Then you two know what to do. We need to keep the fire strong. Fold the cloth the way we showed you. Neatly, no excuses.”

Selena nods right away, waking more up. Liora lingers, reluctant, but finally follows. Mio catches Danielle’s eye and gives her a quiet, “Thank you.”

Marcus ducks in with the steaming bucket, grin tugging at his mouth. “Boiled creek vintage, only the best for tonight.”

I hear Danielle yell in from outside. “If you spill that, you are drinking it yourself!”

Marcus snorts, setting it down carefully. “Would still taste better than what you make.” I shake my head, grateful for some normalcy this early in the morning.

The rhythm begins to form. Blankets laid for padding. Cloth ready. Warm water at hand. Mio steadies Angela’s breathing, her voice a constant thread. James clings to her hand but does as I say. He wipes her brow, speaks to her, and counts the breaths aloud.

I glance at Mio. She nods once, and I turn to Angela. “I will need to check dilation,” I tell her. “It will show how far along you are.”

Angela grimaces, sighs, but eventually nods. “Do it.”

James clears his throat, eyes still tight. “I know it’s needed. Just… not easy to watch.”

I catch his eye. “This is only to help her, James. Nothing more.”

I work quickly, Mio making sure the tent stays closed. My hands know the measure, though it has been more than a century since I last did this. She is only at the beginning. Not open enough yet for the child to come.

I press gently at her abdomen, gauging the child’s position. The head sits low, aligned where it should be. I look to Mio. “The orientation is sound.” Then to Angela and James both. “You are in early labor. It will likely take hours yet. Rest when you can. She will need patience, and so will you.” James swallows hard and nods.

He brushes damp hair from Angela’s face while another contraction ebbs.

Angela exhales, shaky but eased. Mio squeezes her shoulder gently. “Mine were brought early. It was planned, and to be fair, with help to blunt some of it. I know this isn’t the same, I know. It’ll takes strength. I know you have that. You’ll get through.”

Angela closes her eyes, letting both voices steady her. James leans close, whispering her name, softer now.

Strange, to return to skills unused for so long. Stranger still how natural it feels to guide them again.

I step out into the early gray and keep everyone focused with short, clear words. “This will take time. Do not burn the fire down. Keep the water warm. Keep the cloth clean.”

Outside, the twins fold cloth in uneven stacks, trying to be useful. Marcus hauls water back and forth, and Danielle snaps at him each time he rushes. The renewed fire burns brighter, though the fog is barely there as the gray of dawn begins to show.

Mio catches my eye as she steps aside for a moment. “We’re going to be here a while. Even with the twins planned at the hospital, it took most of the day.”

I nod. “Then we plan for longer. The fog will need renewing. Even once the child is here, we will not be able to move far. After that, we must find housing to hold us through the winter.”

We had known this day was near, but it comes so suddenly still, like it has stolen ahead of us.

Her next cry carries sharp through the camp, pulling me back inside. I find her gripping James’s hand until his knuckles pale. He bends close, whispering her name, his voice shaking but steadier than before. I have seen some version of this scene across thousands of years, yet never with these people, in this broken little camp. I rest my hand on the blankets, close enough to guide but not intrude. James keeps breathing with her without being reminded.

There are no shortcuts here. No light or rain or stone. Only cloth, water, food, and patience. Her long work has begun, and ours is to stand with her.

Morning drags into day. Angela dozes between contractions, gathering strength where she can. James never leaves her side, his voice raw from whispering encouragement. The rest of us fall into a rhythm of tending the fire, boiling water, and sharing what food we can.

Marcus flops onto a log, stretching his legs out. “We should have paid for priority delivery.”

Danielle’s boot arcs through the air and clips his shoulder. “Idiot.”

The twins laugh, and I even hear Angela manage a faint chuckle before another contraction comes from her.

Outside, the fog needs refreshing more often. Sunlight eats at it faster than cool night air. Mio and Selena work in tandem, weaving it back into place whenever it thins. Selena holds her focus longer this time, steady where once she faltered. Pride shows in Mio’s glance toward her.

The camp slows in the gray light. Angela rests, James holds her hand, and the others move in worn rhythm. I stand at the tent’s edge watching Mio and Selena renew the thinning fog.

Beyond it, the world is still Adrian’s as much as ours. We have survived by staying small, quiet, and difficult to find. I no longer know how long that can be enough. If Dominion keeps spreading, eventually hiding may become another way of waiting for it to reach us.

Angela shifts inside the tent, and James murmurs something too low for me to hear. For now, there is water to keep warm, a fire to tend, and a child trying to enter the world. The rest remains uncertain.

Angela stirs, a sharp breath breaking her doze. Her grip clamps down on James’s hand. Her eyes snap open.

“Think it is time.”