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“Yeah, I don’t know,” I say, desperately trying to keep the smile out of my voice. Maybe guys weren’t supposed to get all giddy about their first kiss, especially 18-year-old guys, but I couldn’t help it. Except…

“Do you think she did it because she wanted to or…you didn’t suggest that she kiss me, did you?” I shoot him a look, willing him to be straight with me.

He lays his right hand over his heart. “I promise,
brah, I would not do that to you. I took care of the physical pain, that’s it. The girl wanted to kiss you, and from what Ben and I walked in on, more than kiss you.” He laughs and we turn up the driveway. “You’re so out of your depth.”

“No shit.” I go to open the screen door and then stall. “What about the stuff Ben said? Now that Penny and I are…whatever we are, I really can’t keep from investigating the Crusaders and Parker, can I?”

Reed looks over his shoulder as though someone is spying on us. Paranoia is strong with him, especially when Ty isn’t around to talk him down. “I don’t know. I’m not a Lookout, so I never think ahead, y’know? I let Phoebs take care of business for me and just do my thing. But, if you’re asking from a trigger/Retro relationship point of view? If anyone tried to fuck with Ty, I’d for damn sure be all over the situation. Ben says we need to work together and that going it alone is dangerous, and I agree under most circumstances, but man, you’ve got to
at a minimum
have your antenna up, feel?”

“I do, Reed. Thanks.” I pull the screen door open and head past the family room toward Zellie and Avery’s bedroom on the right side of the hall. Mel and Raleigh’s
is on the left, and I make camp on the futon in the family room. The house is quiet except for the all the cooing going on behind Zellie’s door, most of it coming from Avery. I knock.

“It’s Wyatt and Reed.”

Claire throws the door wide and tackle-hugs me. “He is the tiniest little bit, Wy, and he looks so much like you did! It’s way cray cray.” Her eyes are puffy and red like she’s been crying enough happy tears to give the baby a full-on baptism right here and now. She grabs Reed and me by the arms and drags us into the room. Reed hangs back while I go in for the cute.

Zellie and Avery are all sweaty and snuggly on their bed, unable to tear their eyes away from the little bundle of blankets in
Zel’s arms. Melody puts her hand on my back and nudges me forward.

“Hey,” I say, leaning in and kissing
Zellie’s cheek. She pulls the blanket away from the baby’s face so I can get a better look. He’s pinkish and breakable-looking and so damn small. “Wow, it’s weird how something that tiny made you so gigantic.”

Zellie giggles as Avery reaches over her and whacks me upside the head. My familial equilibrium finally levels out after a rocky few days.

Christopher gets to his feet, looking weak and like he’s been in a battle. “Reed, if you wouldn’t mind?”

Reed nods and stares at Zellie. She smiles at Christopher. “Thanks. You’re the best epidural a girl could ask for.”

“No problem, sweetie. I’m happy you’re happy, and now I’m going to sleep like a dead person for three days. If you’ll excuse me.”

“So, what’s my nephew’s name?” I ask.

Avery lightly strokes his son’s arm. “Michael Frances Adams.”

My heart clenches.
“Dad and Frank, huh? You tell Ben and Christopher?” Frank -- Frances, was Ben’s uncle and Lookout. He was also Uncle Christopher’s partner for over a decade. He went to the light a few years ago and it just plain sucks.

“Yeah,” Avery says, grinning. “We made Ben cry, so that was a bonus.”

Translation: Avery owes Ben his life and honoring him in this way is the least he can do.

The two of them have always had a strange relationship.
Zellie’s trigger and the guy she’s closest to aren’t both my brother Avery. Zellie’s bond with Ben, and to a lesser extent, Christopher, is something Avery can’t touch. I’ve grown up watching him wrestle with that and in a way it’s helped me deal with the transition my relationship with Elle went through after she found Kai. The trigger/Retro bond is physical, chemical, and undeniable. You can’t fight meant-to-be. But sometimes the people aren’t that well matched. Elle loves Kai, Zellie loves Avery, yet they can also care deeply for someone else. Someone they might have chosen if they’d been given the choice.

“Speaking of…” Melody says. “I better get down to Penny’s room and make sure she and Ben haven’t both run away to the rescue.” She kisses Zellie and then squeezes Raleigh’s hand, sharing a moment with him. Of all the people in my family, Melody and Raleigh are the most normal.

And they met while he was on his death bed, possessed by an evil spirit.

Which is usually a big joke we all have a
bueno laugh about at the holidays – “It would take a man possessed to fall for Melody” – except for the fact that at times like this all it does is remind him and my sister that they can’t have kids because his body is messed up.

“I’ll walk you over,” Raleigh says. He nods at Avery and then opens the door for Melody.

“I better head home for a bit too,” Aunt Claire says. “I’ve got a dinnertime conference call with the Lodge manager in a couple of hours that I haven’t prepared for at all.” She high fives Zellie. “You kick all the ass at birthing babies.”

“Thanks for hanging in there with me even when I threatened to punch you in the face.”

Claire sticks out her tongue. “Bygones.”

Reed and I sit on a bench at the foot of the bed. He doesn’t say much, his focus on Zellie, making me think that childbirth ranks on the pain scale somewhere around being hit by a car for him to have to concentrate so hard on her.

“Anyone call Moms and Dads yet?” I ask.

“Mind fielding that one for us, little bro?”
Avery takes Michael from Zellie and lays him on the bed, fixing his burrito wrap.

“No problem.”

“And tell Mike to give us a heads up before he just appears here, okay?” Zellie says, scooching down and closing her eyes.

“Get some sleep,” Reed whispers.

We go outside and park it on the front steps. Reed fires up his one-hitter while I put on my Ret and tech Mom at the cabin then Mama Becky and Papa Paul at their suite at the Lodge. They used to live in the house that Zellie and Melody grew up in, but after they got married and were seen out with me and Mom, Papa Paul lost his job as pastor of Trinity Lutheran. People thought he was secretly involved with both Mom and Mama Becky, which was only true in that the three of them raised all of us kids together. Luckily, Claire’s parents gave Papa Paul a catering job to start and made Mama Becky the head stylist at The Lodge. They moved up to the mountain to be closer to me and work two years ago.

“Hey, sweetie,” Mom says, popping up in the center window of my microscreen. “Your dad’s here too.” Of course he is. He barely leaves her side long enough to let her take a
pee in private, and she likes it that way.

“Hi,
Wy-guy!” Mama Becky and Papa Paul wave at me from the window to the left of Mom.

“Parents.”
Sometimes that’s the best way to address them all. “I’m calling because-”

“What’s that cloud of smoke hanging around your head, Bud?” Papa Paul asks.

Reed snort-coughs and then starts hacking up a lung.

“Is that you, Reed Morgan?” Mom scolds.

I turn my head toward Reed, and he gives them a thumbs up.

“Anyway,” I say, pulling their attention back to me. “Zellie had the baby!”

“What?” Three voices shriek in grandparental excitement back at me.

“She wasn’t due for another two weeks,” Mom says.

I shrug. “Well, he’s here and he’s awesome. They named him Michael Frances.”

“How much did he weigh?”

“How long was the labor?”

“Does he have a
conehead?”

“Who does he look like?”

“DOES HE HAVE RED HAIR?”

Now I knew why Avery and Zellie had blessed me with this task.

“I don’t know. He’s baby-sized. Not very long, a few hours. No conehead. He looks like me, at least that’s what Claire said. And he’s got a bunch of dark hair.”

“
Awww,” they say in unison. Mom and Mama Becky start to cry.

“Oh, and Dad should wait a while to come visit.
Maybe tomorrow or the next day? Check in with Avery first.”

Reed elbows me hard in the ribs and points toward the Society School house. While my parents chatter on in my left eye, I watch as Melody follows Ben to his car. She waves me over.

“I gotta go,” I say and disconnect, stowing my Ret-tech in my hip harness. Reed and I jog over to Melody.

“Ben’s executing Penny’s vision,” Melody says as we walk with her to Uncle Ben’s car. “I left Elle and Kai downstairs with her, but you two should probably go help. She was fighting the restraints like crazy and Elle can’t hold onto her without getting sucked into the vision as well.”

The driver’s side door on Uncle Ben’s car rises and he gets in.

“Keep your Ret-tech on,
Wy. I’ll be in touch if we need backup.” Melody hops into the passenger seat and barely has time enough to strap her seat belt on when he takes off, peeling out to the end of the street and then driving east.

“Shit,” Reed says as we jog to the house. “I wonder if the drugs Dr. Avery had her on kept her from dreaming anything
else?”

“You don’t think I brought that up to him? She really didn’t want to be medicated. I knew there was more to it than past drug abuse.” I fly through the front door and down the hall to the spiral staircase. I punch in Uncle Ben’s access code, surprised that it still works. “Fuck. I hope she’s dreaming about something easy, because it’s going to take more than Melody and Ben to go up against the Crusaders – and with Zellie and Christopher out of commission...”

Reed slaps his cheeks. “I’ll get straight. Go on ahead to Penny’s room and I’ll go fetch Phoebe and Ty.”

We grab our badges from the guard station and split off in opposite directions once we reach the rotunda.

I rush down the hall, badging it through the infirmary door, and into the clinic, where Penny’s room is located. I can already tell that things are bad. The sound of something heavy, like a hospital bed, banging into the wall and Kai screaming, “You have got to hold her feet, Elle!” push my legs to run faster.

I shoulder through the door. A zoned out Elle has one limp hand on Penny’s leg, about ninety-percent lost in the vision. Kai is straddling Penny, holding her legs down with his, while his hands are working to strap her right wrist in as she is pulling her left free.

“Elle!” I shout, clapping my hands loudly in front of her face. “Play by play, sweetheart. Get it together.” She eases away from Penny, keeping a fingertip on the top of Penny’s foot.

Kai moves off of Penny and I climb on the bed, trapping her left arm and leg underneath mine, attempting to avoid her ribs.

“So not the way I imagined my first threesome,” I joke nervously. Kai looks like he’s about to hurl. He averts his eyes from meeting mine.

“She’s arrived,” Elle says
, her voice tinged with fear. “Penny is walking toward a hanger at the airport on the hill. She’s going to a door, reaching for the handle. It’s locked…”

Penny

Ben’s large, manicured hands reach out in front of me, not me, and open the regular-sized door in the side of the white, sun-bleached and rust-spotted hanger. The door is locked. He steps back and a woman with bobbed blond hair appears. Wyatt’s other sister…Melody, I think. She’s quick with the lock pick, springing the door open. He pushes her out of the way and enters the hanger first. It’s dark and there are gigantic shadowed machines everywhere, but he moves forward, knowing I need to reach the far wall. She follows behind him and then catches up, the beam of light from her headlamp getting swallowed up in the enormity of the hanger. She sweeps her head from side to side, as if she’s getting the lay of the land, and then turns it off. There’s an office just to the right of another door with a red glowing EXIT sign above it, and they let it guide them.

I know this because there were flashes, my mind catching me up on scenes I had missed while I was on morphine. The instant my eyes closed, my brain started working, trying to get me to this point, filling in the blanks.

Parker Henry is here. Not dead, after all, but barely alive.

What my subconscious has failed to tell me is if Parker has talked, has said anything about the formula that the Crusaders wanted. I decide he must have or his body would be sunk under a concrete block in the Pacific.

Ben moves through the vast, dark room, Wyatt’s sister by his side, matching him
stride for stride. It’s different having long legs. Faster. They practically glide across the concrete floor.

Hands out, braced for impact, I expect to feel the corrugated metal siding on the office wall…and I do. It’s cool beneath Ben’s fingers. He takes long side-steps to the left with his hands still against the wall.
1,2,3,4, and he comes to the office door. This time, he doesn’t wait to pick the lock and kicks it open.