“But you were shot.”
As if just remembering, Taylor touches the open hole in the back of her sweatshirt. “I was grazed by a bullet, yes.”
She flattens her back against the van, thwarting my efforts to sneak looks at her wound. Her attention turns to her companions. “You got knifed.” If Javier is wounded, it is not visible in the darkness of the van. Evidently my abductor has acquired X-ray vision and, honestly, she doesn’t need any more superpowers. “You okay?”
“Got a dog off your tail, that’s all.” He carves his face into a smile. “Nothing a shot of whiskey and a good night’s sleep won’t fix.”
Alisa frowns and rolls up Javier’s sleeve cautiously. “How thrilling it must be to live in the gray expanse between bravery and recklessness.” She delivers us a scolding look. “All of you.”
The maternal admonishment fixes us into bashful, companionable silence.
After long minutesof zigzagging through city streets, the van comes to a stop as Taylor parses out stacks of cash to each of her companions, as well as tucking some into Mason’s backpack. I hold out my hands but I only receive a glare before she zips up her duffel bag and hops out of the back.
Out of nagging curiosity, I slink out behind her to see who’s receiving this blood money. To my surprise, we’re outside of a looming church. A vestige of old New York with its giant, concrete peaks and beautiful stained glass windows. The spires nearly touch the clouds, as if reaching toward heaven with upturned hands. Its stone facade is carved with impressively intricate reliefs of saints and crosses.
The scene in front of the church is surreal. Matted grass is an aphotic river upon which a thousand paper lanterns float in place. At least one hundred pup tents lie on the expansive lawn, illuminated by orange heaters. Ragged children and haggard adults weave in and out of the makeshift homes. A gangly boy in a tattered jacket bounds up to Taylor on shoeless feet. She greets him with a smile and relays a message, after which he takes off in the direction of the church’s open front doors.
Within a minute or two, the boy returns with two diminutive, elderly nuns shuffling behind. One relieves Taylor of her duffel bag as the other envelops her in a hug. A crowd forms around her, children with adoring gazes. They’re fascinated by her, enthralled by her presence. Who wouldn’t be enthralled by an altruistic hero handing over a fortune in exchange for gratitude?
Before Taylor can spot me, I slip back into my seat. Alisa takes me in with an easy smile. I haven’t had a chance to observe her with any scrutiny, other than a favorable first impression. She’s probably in her forties, with copper skin that wrinkles around her kind, brown eyes from a lifetime of smiling. Petite and tall—not as tall as me, but close. A comforting maternal air radiates from her. “Not what you expected, is it?”
“I’m not sure what I expected,” I reply.
Javier rubs his chin. “I sure as shit didn’t expect you to go after a Lightbringer. Figured a princess like you’d have lost her shit.”
“Jav, don’t be rude.” Alisa swats him.
“I ain’t being rude. I’m being honest.”
“What he means is that was quite unexpected. Eos is usually less than thrilled when her orders are disobeyed.”
I shrug. “Well, this princess isn’t used to taking orders yet.”
“Yeah, that’s for sure.” Javier waves a hand in my direction. “Ah, whatever. Take it from an old man who is well past his prime: as long as you survive, the how don’t matter much.”
Upon Taylor’s return, we prowl the streets of my region’s capital city in silence. The lack of conversation is unbearable for me. “So, do these smash-and-grabs happen often?”
“Not as much anymore,” Alisa says. “It was primarily training for them when they were younger.”
“We trained the three of them since they were pups.” Javier smiles proudly at Taylor. Taylor smiles back half-heartedly and Alisa reaches across the van to pat her knee. “But we keep intouch with our region contacts, and if Eos thinks we need to regroup and assist, we do.”
“The church is Order too?”
Alisa’s smile grows sly. “It’s notnotOrder.” Taylor gestures for her to go ahead. “Religious organizations don’t get region support here, as I’m sure you’re aware. And while the Order is secular, we see opportunity there to engender goodwill with the Underclass.”
“The nuns don’t ask where you procure this dubious wealth from?”
“Oh, they excuse it one way or another,” Javier interjects with a laugh. “As long as they can help others, they’ll make it fit into God’s plan.”
“And as long as they tell people who made it possible.” The bigger picture comes together for me. “It’s less about being generous, and more about optics.”
“It is both,” Taylor says. “We must do this work, improve the lives of the Underclass, before we can even consider being worthy enough to lead them. Our efforts cannot only be top-down, they must also come from the ground up. The people must believe in us.”
Alisa rests her head against the van wall. “We ask people to die for our cause. We must be people worth dying for.”
6
Instead of the field from which we departed, the van makes its next stop outside a row of abandoned storefronts. Flickering neon signs and dilapidated vinyl banners hang below equally derelict, but lived-in, shuttered apartments. Detritus float down the road like tumbleweeds, accompanied every so often by a stumbling drunk citizen. Though this is the city in which I was born, this post-apocalyptic wasteland is foreign to me. Everyone gets out and shuffles toward a door a few steps down from street level. Everyone but Taylor.
