"You're in your 30-, Cassandra, that clock is ticking and-"
"Mom."
She huffed. "I just don't want you to end up all old and saggy, dreaming about all those babies you never got to hold. Your aunt Esmerelda-"
"Aunt Essie never wanted kids because she saw what a little horror I was," I said, barely able to withhold a smile. I'd loved my Aunt Esmerelda until the day a building came down on her. She was one of the few who had never told me that Blitzers weren't worth their salt.
Hell, her death had been one of the things that had kicked off the fight with Demeter, now that I thought of it. Mind you, Aunt Essie had been in another town when it'd happened. If she hadn't, I might have been in that building with her. That made me pause. Maybe Mom wasn't entirely wrong. If I wanted kids, I'd been in plenty of places where I'd have had regrets, unfinished plans, had the dice not rolled in my favor.
I downed my coffee to compensate. Those were thoughts for another time, another place. My relationships were young, except Nishelle's of course, and we were still re-establishing that. I loved them all, absolutely the big L word, but family-building, marriages, that kind of stuff? I didn't think any of us were ready to talk about that.
Yet.
"Be that as it may," Mom said, not even bothering to deny it. I'd been hell as a kid. "You need to start considering your long-term affairs. You're not a child anymore."
I tilted my head at her. "I'm not. And I hadn't thought of that. I suppose I don't really need their permission to do anything, do I?"
"Their permission? Whose?"
The mug came to rest on the table and I stood up, stretching. "I'll be back as soon as I can, Mom. I have an errand to do."
Without giving her the chance to argue with me, I left the room. We had clothing caches all over the city, but the only one I knew of close by was one that I'd raided not too long ago. Anything in it was too big or too small for me. I entered one of the spare rooms, thankfully abandoned, and peered through the closet.
I hit paydirt. Thankfully, whoever used this place as a shelter more often than not was smart enough to have a cache of clothing within it. I grabbed a dark top, a pair of jeans, and shoes that fit me perfectly. I'd smoked out most of my clothing during my little Psychic attempt last night. I hurled my charred clothes into a corner and pulled on the new ones. Then I opened the window in the room and carefully stepped out onto the fire escape, trying to make sure it didn't rattle as I walked down it.
The sky overhead was moving from pink to dreamsicle as I took to the streets at a trot. My body begged me to slow down but there was no use in that. The sooner I got it done, the better.
We were a good half an hour from the Alliance building as it was, further than normal as I kept having to skirt around Kipas that were too smart and too powerful from their look. I didn't want to tangle with them by myself, uncertain just how far I'd overextended myself last night.
I managed to sneak into the stairwell in the parking garage, my identity thankfully still registered with whatever computer system was left functioning up above. I took the stairs two at a time, pausing on each landing to listen for anyone who might be coming to fetch me. If I were Scribe, I'd have had a million guards in the hallways.
But they were completely abandoned. I opened the third-floor door after a minute of watching and frowned. Allison was certainly still here; she'd tried to drag us into the Dream. Perhaps Scribe had left? Maybe someone had already come and defeated him?
I peeked in the open doorways. Children's toys were scattered on the floor of someone's apartment, pizza left to rot on the coffee table of another. I swallowed and hoped, nearly prayed, that whoever had been in those apartments was somewhere safe. Maybe there'd been a mass exodus to nearby towns with Alliance buildings.
But if there had, why had someone just left pizza to rot?
Shivering, I tried the elevator but got nowhere. Someone had disabled it. Back into the stairwell I went, my legs complaining around the sixth floor but I had plenty more to scale and they could just shut up about it.
Honestly, I was surprised that my little troop of lovers hadn't decided to find some way to keep me out of the action. Wasn't that part of why I was doing what I was doing? If I could talk some sense into Scribe, or even just scope out what was going on and report back with the details, it would be helpful.
I didn't know how much help I was going to be during the actual fight, but I wanted to try to do -something- before we threw ourselves into the scramble.
"Cassie."
The intercom system crackled at the end of my name. I hesitated, then looked up. There was no way to tell where the cameras were; not on a system that Edwin had designed. He had the tiniest mechanisms I'd ever seen. "How y'doin’, Scribe."
"I'd be better if none of you had ever returned. It was a tragedy that your irresponsible movement killed that young man in Thomaston and so many civilians. You're reckless, wild, untamed. And you cannot continue in that vein and be allowed to live. You're just too much of a risk out on the streets."
My gaze shot around the interior of the stairwell. To the best of my knowledge, we didn't have any sort of suppression gas
