A thought occurred to me. “Did I just completely ruin your chances of going to the dance?”
Her smile was tight. “I’d say you pushing Paladin and Vibe together already did that, but it’s not like Matthew didn't have months to ask me if he was going to. This won’t make it any worse. My body starts dumping the excess mass as soon as we emerge. Shouldn’t be more than an hour or two until I’m back to normal.” She looked down at herself and frowned. “Maybe three. This is the farthest I’ve ever traveled. But at least I did it.”
As I looked around us, I saw that she was right. Less than twenty feet away, a battered green sign, so desolate that not even a Druid had bothered to transform it, welcomed one and all to the town of Ludlow.
We’d made it.
•—•—•
I don’t know what Ludlow was like pre-Break. Maybe it was a thriving metropolis or something. If so, the desert had spent the last eighty-plus years swallowing its pre-Break magnificence, because what remained made Bakersfield seem like Los Angeles. Hell, it made that nameless little town where I’d been tested seem like a real fucking city.
Ludlow had five buildings. One was an old gas station that had been converted to electricity at some point. One was a dilapidated convenience store that I was convinced was older than our country. The other three were residences, and only one of those still had a roof.
“You take me to the nicest places, Evelyn.”
“No wonder I don’t remember it.”
“Here I thought Bakersfield was the ass crack of society.” I turned to the Teleporter and extended the hand she’d shaken free of moments earlier. “Thank you. Have a safe trip back to the dorm. Tell Kayleigh—”
“I’m not going anywhere yet,” Wormhole interrupted. “I have no idea if there’s a limit to what my body can absorb, and I don’t want to chance it, if so. Until I’m somewhere closer to normal, I’m staying right here.”
“Oh.” A few hours alone with Evelyn wasn’t quite how I’d expected to spend my last day of freedom, but at least she wasn’t Winter. “Then let’s head over to the charging station and find some shade.”
We were still twenty paces away when the long barrel of an ancient rifle extended from one of the open windows. A weathered voice called out. “That’s close enough. Not sure where you two came from, but I don’t have any cash on the premises, so you can just keep right on walking.”
“I’d be happy to do so,” I shouted back, watching the rifle weave back and forth, “but my ride’s coming through Ludlow tomorrow, and I need to be here to meet it.”
If the cracked voice and unsteady rifle barrel hadn’t already told me the unseen speaker was old, his loud cackle would have done so. “Ain’t been a ride through here for more than a month, young man. What makes you think one’s coming tomorrow?”
“Tomorrow’s Remembrance Day. President Weatherly arranged shuttles to the Hole.”
“President Weatherly can kiss my wrinkled ass,” I heard the old man mutter. “Are you sure that’s tomorrow?”
“Pretty sure, yeah.”
“Well, shit. I better make sure the charging station’s powered up then.” The long barrel slowly withdrew out of sight, and the next thing we saw was an old man stomping his way out from the convenience store.
“Ah hell, you’re just kids.” He slowed as he reached us, eyes darting from Wormhole’s temporarily hulking form to me. After almost a year at the Academy, my ribs no longer showed, but I was still on the skinny side. “I’m not here to tell young people how to live their lives, but maybe the two of you should renegotiate your portion sizes?”
“This isn’t what I normally look like!” protested Wormhole.
“Not that it would matter if it was,” I put in. Wrecking Ball, one of the original Ten who’d come to Dominion’s call, had been wider than she was tall, and she wasn’t any less venerated than the other nine.
“Easy for you to say, Skeletor,” Evelyn muttered.
“It’s a Power thing,” I explained to the old man.
“Didn’t mean nothing by it,” he muttered, taking a closer look at the Teleporter. Rheumy eyes dropped to her grey sweats and widened. “You both go to the Academy?”
“Yeah.”
“Had a grand-nephew that graduated a decade or so ago. Druid who went by the name of Bramble. You folks hear of him?” He frowned as we both shook our heads, then shrugged. “Joined the Hammers of God out in Salt Lake City. Died a few years later.”
“The Hammers do good work,” said Wormhole. “I’m sure he saved a lot of lives.”
“Could be.” He shrugged again, shoulders as bony as mine poking through his light cotton shirt like the exposed scaffolding of a building. “Anyways, y’all can wait in the store if you want. Don’t have no vid screen working or nothing, but it’s got air conditioning and it’s a shit-ton nicer than out in the sun.”
“Thank you…”
“Randy.” He puffed out his chest. “Randal S. Thurston. Happy to be of service to the Free States’ finest.”
•—•—•
It took Wormhole four hours to return to her usual weight, and she got ready to go immediately after, swaddled in the clothes that would be skintight again when she re-appeared in Los Angeles. She filled her water bottle at the pump near the charging station and turned to me.
“I think you’ll agree that I went above and beyond to help you out today.”
They were the first words she’d said to me in almost two hours.
“You did.”
“Good. Because I have a favor to ask in return.” She slid the water bottle back into her bag. “Don’t come back.”
My own plans notwithstanding, that kind of hurt.
“I’m sorry?”
“It’s not that I think you’re a bad person. I just… there are a lot of good people in our class, and I don’t want—”
“Me dragging them down,” I finished, feeling that old, familiar pain.
“Yeah.” She swallowed and looked away. “Do whatever
