Melanie really is beautiful. Her eyes are large and open and very blue. Innocent but intelligent. There’s a wicked dimple that only appears on the left side of her mouth. Her left. Her lips are full, and the image of her biting them in anticipation of our kiss will not leave me anytime soon. I’m trying not to look at her body. As messed up as I am right now, I want to be my best possible self.

  But what am I doing?

  We’ve kissed. Isn’t there a promise made there? Okay, maybe that’s too strong a word. A statement of shared interest and possibility, at least? No?

  I’ve got no business taking things even that far with my life the way it’s going. I’ll get her killed.

  This is a mistake.

  What can I do about it, though? This is my home. We’re driving down the highway, and it’s not like I’ll throw myself out the door.

  Okay, maybe I could. Maybe I’d land on somebody’s mattress that just blew off the top of their car or something, but I’m not sure I want to try.

  Dammit, I like her.

  And she’s got me feeling better. I mean, I’m still a mess, but Melanie’s a good person. If she’s willing to hang out with me, let alone kiss me, then how bad could I be, right?

  Wow. I can’t tell if I’m horribly selfish to be entertaining the idea of a relationship with her, or if it’s merely irresponsible, or if I’m being an asshole to myself for this impulse to push her away.

  My perspective is all screwed up about myself. It has been for a while now. There’s no way to trust any decision I make about her. Great.

  We’re twenty minutes past the height of the rush hour. Traffic is light and Melanie is handling the motorhome pretty well. It can be unwieldy, especially if it’s windy when it wants to be a kite, but the weather is calm. Trees and farmer’s fields line the highway. We’re almost to the exit, where we turn east toward Willamette. The sky is blue and studded with amorphous archipelagos of clouds.

  Just like Asymmetry.

  Muzzle flashes and bloody faces. Staring eyes. The smell of cordite and shit.

  A soft hand on mine, squeezing, bringing me back into the cab of my home. Melanie smiles at me. She’s so calm and accepting it’s schizophrenic. She should recoil in horror at what I’ve done. Run away. If a satellite crashed into the road in front of us, tossing sedans and pickup trucks like somebody kicked a dandelion, that’d be just another day for me.

  What am I doing with her?

  What am I doing with my life? With the FBI? I could have done other things with my powers. I’m independently wealthy at the moment. Yeah, there are daily bank errors and investment failures, money gets lost, but Myra West soldiers on, shuffles stuff around to minimize losses and maximize profits. Hell, I’m her only client now and she’s richer than I am.

  The point I’m making here is that instead of going out and looking for trouble with the FBI, I could stay at home and spend. Fund solutions to problems rather than find them and face them head on. I’m almost twenty-five, been shot more times than 50 Cent, killed more people than Custer.

  What am I doing?

  Who am I?

  Am I… bad?

  The road, the sky, the scenery holds no answers. The beautiful woman beside me, driving me who knows where, should, right? She judges characters and plumbs minds for a living professionally, and I’m somebody she seems to like. Is that an answer of some kind? Why isn’t that enough?

  ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?

  When the PAU went after all the cult-related human trafficking in the area after we took down the exploding Iotans in Willamette, it surprised me how much was really going on. Just like in my old world, Northeast Ohio is a travel hub. There are two major airports not too far away in Cleveland and Pittsburgh, plus a bunch of smaller ones like Akron-Canton and whatever they call the one in Kent. There are highways like 77, 76, and 71, not to mention the turnpike, and of course there are back ways to get anywhere. In short, it was perfect for the Wild Specters and the Sidorovs’ modus operandi. They would grab somebody and move them out of town as soon as possible. Keeping them in the vicinity risked them being recognized, and nobody knew when a victim’s face might make it onto a billboard or the local news. Few families have the resources to do much besides put up missing posters or ask friends to share things on social media, and that kind of thing tends to stay in the hometown.

  Once taken, they broke their victims in any way their captors could stomach. Traumatized and terrorized people are less likely to resist. They do what they’re told. I’ve sat through quite a few interviews where these assholes expressed surprise at what they did and how those they did it to tolerated it, and it amazed me how the abusers would use their own victimization process to justify it. It’ll bother me just as much the next time I hear it too. Like, if somebody were to put a gun to a kid’s head and tell him he was going to be shot if he didn’t comply, they blame the kid for complying. Like, his choice to survive proves his weaker nature. It’s the logic of the bully. They hold you down, then hold you responsible for being held down, as if they don’t believe they’d do the same. We’re all like that. We all think we’d fight to the last, that we’d stand up to the bully, the gunmen, the Nazi and die with our boots on. Or better yet, somehow grab the upper hand and either escape or blow up their shit, or both. That’s part of why most will placidly walk along with all the others toward the men with the machetes or the ditch full of bodies or into the train car or into the showers or into the myriad other ways humanity has industrialized murder. Any moment now, I’ll get a chance. Any moment there’ll be a rescue. Any moment.

  It’s not their fault. If we’re honest, we concentrate more on the victims in those scenarios. We blame those poor bastards because it’s a lot more comfortable than trying to identify with or understand the murderers, right? Why aren’t those sheep doing anything? Why stroll along like that to certain death? Why not struggle or run? All the while, we know the bullies won’t just let them go. If we think about it, we recognize we only know about these things because either the evil fucks kept meticulous records or someone did escape or did fight their way free. How many other events throughout history have stayed in the dark, though? Where no witnesses were left? Where no one got away and no one ever spoke of it again? No answer to that would be any less chilling than the question.

  At any rate, the FBI takes this kind of thing personally. The new Willamette branch of the PAU, after stopping the Iotans from sacrificing a school’s worth of children and bringing about Armageddon, hates it, and Amir Amin, former victim and computer guy extraordinaire, is downright obsessive on the matter. His skill, my luck, and the FBI’s methods and connections have helped one hell of a lot of people in the last year, and most of them stay here, at the Shelter, for a time.

  The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

  It’s an old experimental school between Kent and Willamette in a suburb called Bury, which I don’t think exists in my old world. At least, I’d never heard of the place. I didn’t know what an experimental school was either until Melanie explains it to me as she takes me up the back steps. Kent State’s got a teaching program, and years ago they used to come here to study what really happens in the classroom. The top floor is smaller than it ought to be, kind of attic-like, with ceilings lower than modern architecture prefers, and that’s because it’s hidden. The kids aren’t supposed to know about the observers, or it’ll screw up the data, right? So, here I am being led by the hand down a long dark hallway with glass panels tilted out over the rooms below, where former victims of all ages are milling around through round tables filled with board games or snacks. There are beat up couches and recliners scattered strategically throughout. There must be fifty people down there, some of them I remember from earlier.

  Jim Beck and his wife cuddle on a sofa. She’s cradling their infant. They seem ill at ease, staring around in wonder at all the hubbub. A couple of kids run screaming by them, one in giggling hot pursuit of the other. I see the cackling old lady, the tall black man, and the sarcastic teen. In fact, the people from the bus earlier are all here and look shell-shocked to be thrown back into humanity like this. The skinny white guy who called me Fuck-o is holding a hand of cards like he’s never seen them before. Like they’ll bend and bite his fingers, but as I watch, he lays them down and a grin fights onto his face as he rakes in a pot of Monopoly money.

  “Most of the people you and the others save agree to come here, at least for a little bit,” says Melanie behind me. “Some are quick to return to their families or whoever is missing them. Everybody who leaves takes with them a referral to a mental health professional in their neighborhood or as close to that as we can manage. Some have no place to go, or can’t face their sudden freedom, or… well, whatever it is, they’re free to stay here as long as they like. We still have one or two from Good Friends Church, in fact. Mo comes here from time to time. She’s very popular, and Cal teams up with Gerry to wrestle with the kids where we’ve set up some mats on the floor. Gerry checks them out medically when his shifts at the hospital are over. His hopeless crush on Cal is noticeable to everybody, and everybody loves him for it. I don’t know where I’d be without Stacy to organize all this. Candace and the Wests help out too. Did you know that?”

  I shake my head.

  “Sheriff Smythe makes sure that there’s a regular patrol by here, though, of course, we don’t advertise. She comes in to check on us. Lately, she’s begun reading to the children. She even does voices! She’s amazing. Oh, look!” A manicured hand appears in my periphery, pointing down at a blonde figure in a neat black suit and skirt, striding over to speak to the Becks. It’s Dr. Black. My therapist.

  “She didn’t tell you, did she? That she’s been coming here?”

  I shake my head.

  “We have a couple of others on staff, all of them juggling private practices at the same time.” I feel a gentle tug on my shoulder. “Look over here.” She guides me to the opposite bank of windows. Down below is a makeshift ring of comfortable chairs, recliners, a sofa, and a love seat, none of them matching. There’s a water cooler and a table full of snacks. “Group therapy,” she says. “We keep the room open all the time. We’ve got a board on a string hanging down by the door. They flip it to purple if they don’t want a professional in there with them, yellow if they do. Sometimes they need to talk alone, you know? And sometimes somebody will run out and turn it and we come running. They can’t see us up here. From out there, it looks like another wall, like a quirk of the building, but they’ve been through a lot, so we hide away up here to watch our for them.”

  I nod.

  “You’ve never come here, though.”

  I walk over to the other side of the hall, hesitate, and then look down the dark corridor towards its far end.

  “That way’s the bedrooms. More converted classrooms like this. We cubicled them up so people have privacy. We don’t go back there.” She sighs. “I keep meaning to contract somebody to put some walls up.” I feel her hand on my shoulder blade. “Ben, everybody’s here, safe because of you. I know you didn’t do it alone, and I know it cost you. I know your world is different from this one. In lots of ways, from what you’ve told me, and we haven’t spoken as much as I would wish, this place is harsher and more violent than yours. Our sensibilities are probably strange to you. We’ve had to become used to things that simply don’t happen where you’re from. I suspect, though, that nobody you knew from before would be anything other than proud of the man you are over here. No one here thinks you’re bad. No one is scared of you. The Sidorovs weren’t practitioners, no, and not subject to summary execution for abusing their powers, but they were a paramilitary group of kidnapping, child-abusing terrorists. Cal tells me that most of them would have died resisting arrest, anyway.”

  “Most.”

  “Hmm?”

  “I killed them all. Some of them weren’t even on this part of the planet.”

  “You didn’t know you were doing that.”

  “How do you know I didn’t know?”

  “Did you?”

  “No. That’s not the point.”

  “What is the point, Ben?”

  I look below at all these broken people sheltered down there and find I can’t answer her question. Nor can I look at her.

  Dr. Black waves goodbye to the Becks. I like to watch her walk away. It’s not sexual. There’s something stately about her gait. Proud. But, yeah, she’s got nice legs for someone old enough to be my mother.

  What would mom say about this evening? I have no idea. Dad? He had friends in the military. Desert Storm and Afghanistan. He’d listen, but I doubt he’d say much, sensing it wasn’t his place. I don’t know what I’d want him to say, anyway. Nick would want to hear the story over and over. He’d acknowledge that I’d done the right thing even as he acknowledged how hard it must’ve been, how difficult it is. He’d be my friend. My mom would be Mom. Dad would be Dad. It’s like I’m feeling their sudden loss all over again at once, their utter inaccessibility. My knees nearly buckle.

  None of them are here, or ever will be again.

  But Melanie is.

  She says, “Are you okay? Do you need—?”

  “No.” If she so much as touches me, I’m going to fly apart.

  She doesn’t.

  I stare at the Becks. They’re calm. The baby is quiet. Jim and Brenda Beck bundle into each other, each of them sporting matching thousand-yard-stares. My God, what they went through.

  I wonder how they feel right at this moment. Does this abrupt shock of safety matter as much as how they’ll feel next week or next year when all of this is further behind them? I’ve no idea. What’s the proper unit of measurement for something like that?

  They’re here because my friends and I saved them.

  There’s a weight of dead on their side of the scale, but fuck if I know how to balance it.

  Melanie can.

  She has, and she likes me. She kissed me.

  Me.

  Today she kissed me. And she wasn’t kidding around like Monica did that once.

  Maybe some things you’ve got no business weighing for yourself. We’ve built that into our societies all over the world. Our justice system depends on that, right? We get some folks together, arbitrate the facts and arguments curated by a judge and some lawyers, sometimes the press, and we all examine somebody’s actions and render a verdict. I mean, what are people going to do? Find themselves guilty?

  I might, actually.

  Still, I don’t think I can let others decide for me about all this. That feels like cowardice. Although I’m certain I can’t judge anything fairly, I’m convinced I have to try.

  The aethings in here are lighter than normal, even with the gentle Pushing I do on autopilot.

  Melanie clears her throat, reminding me she’s still there. “I’m about to say something.” She holds up a hand. “It’s not a pass. It’s going to sound like one, I know, but I’ve got an office near the front, where I keep a bed.” She smiles and her eyes sparkle. “I know you liked the kiss, but I also know that’s as far as you want to go right now. I guess I’m saying you should stay. With me. I’ll hold you or you could hold me. We could hold each other. You don’t have to be alone.”

  I look at her.

  She’s holding her hands together, head down, looking up at me. Her blonde hair creates a golden frame for her lovely face, which, even though she’s thirty, still shows signs of baby fat. Those soft summer sky-blue eyes are full of so much light they contain a gravity all their own, pulling me toward her. Her smile broadens when I take a step towards her. “You can trust me to behave,” she says with a giggle. It’s a promise that implies I can trust her even if she doesn’t behave.

  And with that face and that look and that full body of hers, I don’t trust myself with her. Not now. All that’s beside the point. The day’s left me feeling unclean and certainly unworthy. I can’t want whatever this is.

  When I get to the door, I hesitate. I know I’m not in the right state of mind to make decisions like this. The aethings here are light. Comforting. The ones beyond the glass door, where I’m about to go, are dark.

  Melanie hasn’t followed me back down the stairs. I’m tempted just to waltz into the common room, say hi, and collapse on a couch there until morning. No doubt, I’d be welcome.

  I tell myself I could always come back, like, when I feel more human. Stepping through the doorway, I think I’ll get something to eat somewhere and come back later, knowing I’ll do no such thing. I leave the light behind. Black aethings swirl around me, as if welcoming a fellow doer of dark deeds, and I walk away in whatever direction feels worst.