Madison watched the trees blur by, squished up against the window of Victor’s van by Hazel and Dylan, packed as they were into the backseat. She tapped her fingers together, picked the nails raw, whole body electrified by a nameless, directionless sort of anxiety. They were fleeing.

  They were leaving the city. Victor didn’t act like it was a retreat, kept his fatherly smile on his face, made a valiant effort to engage the kids in pleasant conversation and hum along to the radio, but the twitch of his eyes across the windshield, the tension in his knuckles on the wheel, gave him away.

  Across the packed highway, looming high in her view, was the cloud of smoke that had come to enshroud most of this part of the city since the massive explosion yesterday. The explosion, Madison assumed, was what had Victor in such a mind to get the kids out of here.

  “Wendy’s is still open,” Victor mused, eyes barely flicking over to glance at the restaurant as they chugged past, traffic around them growing more congested with each mile. “Huh. People going back to their jobs at the hospital, or, I dunno, the fire station, that I understand. But clocking in to wipe tables? Now? I can’t tell if I respect it or if I find it silly.”

  “This isn’t fair,” Dylan grumbled. “We can take care of ourselves. You don’t need to-”

  “It’s not about fair, Dylan. It’s about safe.” Victor glanced at the boy through the rearview, eyes soft, baggy from sleeplessness. “Before, I was confident I could bring you all along and keep you at a safe distance, beat the bad guys back enough that you wouldn’t have to risk your necks. But that was before I knew the bad guys could…” Victor trailed off, attention drawn back again to the massive gouge torn into the city off to their side, to the ash hovering in the air above it. “Before I knew how far they were willing to go.”

  “You just thought people would roll over for you, Dad?” Flo made a little scoffing sound, fidgeted with her armrest. “That they’d let you lay out your neat little argument for why you should become God and just, I dunno, decide that was the reasonable call? Come to a nice, civil compromise with you?”

  “No, but-”

  “It’s so like you to assume that people wouldn’t do crazy shit for power like this.”

  “Hey, Flo, language-”

  “Most people with your kinda power, they become psychopaths,” Flo said, with an exasperated laugh. “You didn’t, and you think that’s normal, because you’re you. But it’s not. I can’t believe you didn’t consider that they’d be willing to hurt kids-”

  “Of course I knew that-”

  “That they’d give anything to hurt kids, that they’d throw themselves through a meat grinder to hurt a kid, if it meant there was even a fraction of a chance they’d get to have some power because of it.”

  The traffic was congealing further, and now the car was thrumming, almost stationary, the air inside the van thick with tension.

  “It’s not what most people would do.” Victor said, quietly.

  “It is, actually, I think, Dad. It’s just not what you would do.” Flo tapped her fingers, increasingly loudly, on the armrest. “I get you wanting to drop the youngest ones off, but at least let me stick around. Let me help.”

  “Nope. Out of the question.”

  “That,” Flo jabbed at the smoke cloud. “That wouldn’t have killed me. Not if I had my shield up.”

  “It’s not about the explosion. It’s about the people who made it.”

  “That doesn’t mean anything. If the explosion can’t hurt me, then the people who made the explosion can’t-”

  “Now you’re the one being naive,” Victor said, voice suddenly edged, cold in a way Madison had never heard from the man. “They could, Flo. Your defense is fantastic, but you don’t have stamina like these people do. You don’t have senses sharper than theirs. You don’t have the control to hide well enough to throw them off. They’d catch you by surprise or wear you down, and I might not… There’s a chance I wouldn’t be able to prevent it. A small chance.” Victor cleared his throat. “A chance I refuse to take. So you’re going to Wisconsin, you’re staying with Milo, and I’m picking you up when it’s over.”

  Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

  “It’s not going to be over!” Flo protested.

  “Can we maybe stop fighting?” Hazel muttered.

  “This ends one of two ways,” Flo continued. “With you dead, or you as God, basically. I can’t handle the idea of not being there for either.”

  “I’m not gonna die, sweetie-”

  “You’re saying there’s NO chance?”

  Victor chewed the inside of his cheek. “Well, no. There’s- there’s a small chance.”

  “And it’s a chance I don’t want to take.”

  Victor chuckled. “Ok. Touche. Still. Legal minor. It’s my call in the end.”

  Flo was looking down at her lap, now, blinking back tears. “This is so fucking unfair.”

  “Is this because of me?”

  Everyone’s head swiveled back to look at Madison. She had picked her middle fingernail bloody, now, could feel their stares like heat.

  “Is what because of you?” Victor said, voice gentle.

  “Are you sending everyone away because I’m… leaking? Energy?” Madison dared a quick glance up, regretted it when she saw the pity in Victor’s eyes. “Am I the one that’s causing all those people to keep attacking us?”

  “No, no, nothing like that,” Victor said, in the hollow tones of an adult lying about something they hadn’t expected to lie about.

  “It is, isn’t it.” Madison felt an awful, burning weight congealing in her chest, a vicious self-hatred. She was ruining this nice family. She was hurting Flo and Hazel and Dylan, who had been so nice to her. “You should just drop me off. I can- I can fly away.”

  “And go where?” Dylan said.

  “Away. I don’t want to-” Madison paused, choking back a sob. She hated herself. She tried to speak again, couldn’t, had to take a moment to be racked with more tears. Hazel rubbed her back, tentative. This was so humiliating. “I don’t want to tear you guys apart. I don’t want you to leave each other on my account. I don’t want Victor to die because you weren’t there to help him.”

  “I’m not going to die-”

  “Just let me go. I’ll find somewhere to go to. I can- Because of you all, and the practice we’ve been doing, I- I have enough control, now,” Madison pleaded. “I can control the flying-”

  “You really can’t,” Dylan huffed.

  “I can go and lay low, or, or whatever, until it’s all over. That way you can all be together.” Madison pawed at her eyes. “You’re all in a family, so it hurts you to be alone. I, I’m not in a family. I’m used to being alone, so I’ll- I’ll be fine.”

  Madison’s voice cracked on the last word.

  The car was quiet again. The traffic started back up. Somewhere, distantly, there was the rumble of a small explosion, light and muffled enough that nobody in the car was startled by it.

  “You are in a family,” Hazel said, almost matter-of-fact. “You’re in ours.”

  “No I’m not. You just met me.”

  “You sleep in Hazel’s room, you practice Aura with us, you get our jokes,” Dylan said with a shrug. “You’re in the club, I think.”

  “I’m not Victor’s real kid. I’m just some- some stranger you found in the woods.”

  Flo laughed at that, a weak little bark. Her voice sounded raw, still. “The only one here who’s actually related to Victor is Hazel.”

  “Wait,” Dylan cackled, pointing to his skin. “Wait, did you think he was my blood dad? Maddy, I’m white.”

  “I don’t- I didn’t-” Madison buried her face. Too many emotions were battling for her attention: embarrassment, relief, shame, fear, distrust. She was overwhelmed.

  “Hey, easy on her,” Victor warned gently. “You all call me Dad after all, it’s natural to assume. And Madison, it was very valiant of you to offer, but you have as much say in this as Flo does. You’re sticking with us. You’re not going out on your own. None of this is your fault. You’re in our family, and we’re happy to have you. And that’s final.”

  Madison felt a crushing urge to start crying again, but suppressed it. She felt Hazel’s hand on her back again.

  “We’re not gonna give you up,” Hazel said. “You’re in it with us for good, now.”

  Madison was about to respond, about to give voice to her thanks, or her doubt, or her disbelief, when another explosion rocked the car.

  She looked up in time to see a wave of fresher, angrier, darker black smoke pluming up from the road before them. She straightened in time to see Victor, a blur, unbuckle his seat and wrap them, all four children, in a strained embrace just before something huge collided with the van, shattering it from the front.

  Madison was thrown from the car, impact absorbed by a stray chunk of Aura that Victor had globbed onto her at the last second. She skidded to a stop, looked up to see a crazed-looking man with stringy black hair standing amidst the flaming wreckage of the van, his hand clenched tightly around Victor’s throat. A ruined jumpsuit clung to the man in tatters, burned and torn.

  Around her, Hazel and Flo and Dylan were already climbing to their feet, Auras flaring to life, expressions of shock and pain already tightening into focus.

  Victor let loose a blow, a single punch at the scraggly man’s head, the impact powerful enough to shatter the windshields of all the nearby cars not already blown off the road by the man’s sudden arrival. Madison felt actual wind on her face, a shockwave from the single impact, one she was sure would’ve been strong enough to blast a hole into a mountain, to level a building.

  The scraggly man’s jaw was blown clean off, but he seemed otherwise unperturbed. With a twitch and a jerk, a new jaw was already jutting its way out of his throat, like a bony pair of mandibles. His grip around Victor’s throat was as tight as it had been before the punch.

  “Finally,” the grimy man rasped. “Some good food.”