"Mr. Pawterson always told Wendy things would turn out okay. But then again, Mr. Pawterson was a teddy bear, and he didn't know any better." -Cherished Keepsake, Arkham Horror-

  _____

  Camille the Azure stopped sleeping.

  No.

  Cam blinked as she sat upright in her bed, and reminded herself.

  Sleep left her, as it did for every one of the creatures that shared her form, rapidly. Having needed to wake Nate up on occasion, Cam was aware that humans woke up in different ways. Specifically, with a lot of grumbling and swearing, swatting at the air and not really seeming fully conscious for minutes after. Cam didn’t seem to have that issue. She went from asleep, to awake, in a flat instant; like a device being powered on.

  Any number of things could cause it. She had the blinds in her room slanted so that the sun would hit her at a specific time, but also, she was good at simply waking up at the time she wanted. Or it could have been a foreign sound in the Townton apartment.

  For a long time, for her whole life likely, waking up had been… that. A mechanical output of a physical process. It was just light, just sound.

  But now it wasn’t. Not anymore. She knew that she had changed, and that her situation had changed, and that her life had changed. But Cam had believed that light and sound would remain constant things. And she was continually surprised to find that they hadn’t; that even simple processes took on a kind of deliberate potential for enjoyment.

  The sunlight was warm on her skin, especially her scaled wings that she had never let go of the spell for, streaming in through the blinds. This part of the country was still warm, even now in November, and it made her feel enlivened as she took time to breathe and experience the sensation of sitting in the sun instead of simply jolting out of bed.

  Outside, because the din of reconstruction hadn’t picked up yet, she could hear voices. Footfalls and rasps and clicks from different people moving in different ways across sidewalks and grasses. A distant engine, standing out because the Order really only used cars here for delving or shipments. It was the sound of a different kind of city than Cam had ever lived in. Small, closer to a village that happened to have sprung up amid a ruin, but still something worth listening to.

  It wasn’t just light and sound. It was something else.

  But just because the world was no longer quite so bluntly mechanical didn’t mean Cam had broken all her own enforced habits. So after a minute of just quietly experiencing, something that her therapist had recommended to her, she got out of bed quickly. Rotating a quick ninety degrees and folding the blanket in half with a deft move of one thin leg to free herself before planting both feet on the floor. Cool wood didn’t bother her at all as she stood, letting her wings droop behind her, and started her morning routine.

  The routine had changed. But the intent behind it was the same as ever. Finish the required tasks, and then get to work.

  Cam stepped into the small bathroom attached to her room, turning on the sink and the low water pressure that the improvised fix to the pipes here allowed for now. Cupping her hands, she splashed clean water on her face, fully clearing away any trace of sleep with fingers that dragged over bulletproof skin.

  She looked at her own reflection staring back at her, and had a small moment of doubt. That she wasn’t supposed to be here, that she was wrong, that she wasn’t worth it.

  Cam didn’t like the mirror over the sink that much. But it made putting on makeup easier.

  Makeup was a new part of the routine. Elizebeth had perhaps more passion for it than Cam did, but the young human girl had taught her one important thing that Cam had internalized; makeup was a form of armor all its own. And she could understand and appreciate that. She didn’t need a lot, just something to hide the hollow look around her eyes and smooth the lines of her cheeks. Armor that made her look less hostile. Because what she needed was more… social defenses. Not for the people looking at her, but for Cam to feel like she wasn’t a problem to be looked at.

  She was almost certain that was fucked up, but couldn’t figure out how. It also wasn’t really a problem as far as Cam cared. It made her feel more effective, and that was enough.

  After failing to have another inconvenient emotional crisis, she got dressed. The wings were staying, Cam knew that with more certainty than she knew most things, but she still struggled with shirts, and she managed to finally rend her sleeping shirt in half as she changed into her standard grey shirt and pants combo. She’d deal with that later.

  Checking on the two Camilles down here on the way to the apartment’s front room, Cam saw them both laying in their beds. One had been stabbed through the heart, and had taken a while to heal fully, but she should be nearly back in fighting shape by now. The other had… melted, among other things. The ochre had not had a good time with whatever had hit her, and her folded and pitted skin, messed up even after healing, was a reminder to Cam that there were things her defenses couldn’t stop.

  ”Good morning.” She told the two that were faking unconsciousness again. “It has been two months and six days, and one month eight days respectively, since you have been brought here. You can get up at any point.” They didn’t move. They were not as clever as they thought they were. Cam wondered if she had ever been this foolish, and repressed a wince as she decided she probably still was.

  They’d be fine. They both played at small periods of awareness to eat and stretch, but they moved like captives, and they knew they were being closely watched.

  Cam wasn’t worried about them, not really. She was worried about what they’d do if they caught her off guard and decided to do something damaging to Townton.

  Not that she was the only guard watching them. “Mornin’.” Nate greeted her as she walked into the kitchen and deftly flipped a pan off the drying rack and onto a burner. “Sleep alright?”

  ”Well enough.” Cam said. They did this every morning, and she wasn’t going to explain that she never really knew how she slept. “Have you eaten?”

  ”Sure.” Nate lied. So Cam added six eggs to the pan instead of four. Hands that were trained and accustomed to holding a thirty pound mace awkwardly adapting to the task of dicing locally and magically grown bell pepper and onion to add to the scramble. She knew this could be made better, but hadn’t had time to really learn the ins and outs of seasoning and cooking time and whatever else went into being a chef. All she knew was that eating something kept her body working, so she portioned out her breakfast and handed the second plate to Nate. “At some point, I need to show you how to do eggs properly.” The chef said as he bit into his meal.

  ”If you were ever awake enough to be trusted with flame, I would agree.” Cam said as she ate her own food. It was, in a word, alright. Not even close to what Nate could do with the exact same ingredients, but edible.

  ”Sleep is for the dead.” Nate rebutted, though his heart wasn’t in it, and Cam worried that he’d be joining the ranks of the fallen if he kept pushing himself like he did. “Keep an eye on the necroads today. Pack of them attacked while you were asleep.” Cam nodded, she’d processed the distant combat sounds in her dreamless night. “Nothing else you need to know.”

  She raised an eyebrow at the man sitting heavily on the singular couch in the apartment’s front room. “Nothing?” Cam asked, doing her best to channel the kind of casual questioning suspicion that some people she’d met could do with just a single word.

  Nate wasn’t taken in by it, even though he was the one who was supposedly teaching her how to pull it off. “Nothing doesn’t mean nothing I want to tell you.” He grunted at her as he handed back his already polished plate. “It means no new leads. Happens a lot. The Last Line is good at vanishing when he feels like it.”

  They were trying to track the pillar. Because he seemed like one of the more organized and proactive ones, and a single thread from him could lead to projects or plans from any number of other pillars, including ones they had no knowledge of.

  It was not going well. It wasn’t going poorly either. But Nate was… bad at giving up control. And so he was hesitating to let anyone else help secure her sisters. Which meant he was stretching himself thin trying to do two jobs. Cam didn’t know what he was thinking or why, and he shared even less than she did, but she could see him slowing down, day by day.

  She needed to do something about it. But volition had never been her strong suit, and so she was… working up to it. Whatever it was.

  ”Sleep. I’ll be nearby all day, and their room is alarmed.” Cam told him. Nate made the kind of noise of protest that only a human who had been up for thirty hours straight could manage; the kind that was a complete lie. He had already closed his eyes on the couch, and Cam let him nap in that uncomfortable position while she ran through her morning exercise routine.

  Her body wasn’t human. Might not even need exercise. But it felt right to do so. Calisthenics, cardio, a low effort weight training set, and a number of pushups she was told looked weird coming from someone who had arms as thin as hers.

  Cam had never had a problem with what her body looked like. But she did understand that, without the armor on, her lack of apparent muscle made her physical abilities seem incorrect, wrong. She wore longer sleeves when she participated in group training sessions for that reason.

  After the workout, she had one thing to do before leaving. A dip into the well of power behind her eyes and ears, her fortune sense. It was full now, but Cam had been advised to not keep it in reserve. With the Last Line Of Defense, it was only to be used for sanctioned action, and Cam suspected that he had two reasons for that. Because as she had learned over her life, the more she used it… the deeper the pool got.

  So she kept most of it back. But she used enough to get started on stepping outside into the morning sunlight. Just enough to pick up one of the blue spots of a chance encounter that she could make real by picking a direction to walk. It was, in its own way, exercise. Strengthening herself for when she was needed.

  But it also gave her a starting point for her patrol.

  She double checked the layers of alarms on the bedroom the Camilles were in, made sure they had food and water for when they decided to stop faking being asleep, and left Nate napping on the couch.

  And then Cam opened the door to fresh air and bright light. Three flights of stairs between her, and her morning patrol of the city.

  _____

  Each day, Cam completed a security patrol of Townton. It was a task that-

  No.

  Every day, Cam… took a walk.

  It was incorrect to say that she never participated in Townton’s security; since coming here that was quite honestly almost all she did. But people were trying to get her to stop thinking of things entirely in terms of concepts like security or conflict. The people here, Nate included, were better people than they realized, and Cam was trying her best to live up to their expectations.

  So she took a walk, that was not a patrol, along a mostly predetermined route that happened to pass by all of the recovery zone’s checkpoints and put her in contact with a large number of people.

  Admittedly, this one was harder for Cam to grapple with than simply understanding how her perception of things like morning sunlight had shifted. She knew she was supposed to be learning, even if no one said it this way, to be a civilian. But… she liked patrolling Townton. More than she had ever liked similar duties under the Last Line. These were people worth keeping safe, and so why shouldn’t she take pride in doing that job? In being someone who was worthy of them in return?

  ”It often feels, in recent days,” she told her patrol companion, “that I am being treated like a child that is holding a gun.” The sidewalk of Townton underfoot was cracked and weed filled from a mix of decades of lack of maintenance, battle damage, and chanter influence, all of which gave it its own unique character that Cam largely ignored. Instead she kept one eye on the upcoming logisticor site, one eye on the barricade running along the backyards of a cluster of abandoned single story homes, and one eye on the trio of chanters that were simply standing in one of the little dirt filled islands amid the asphalt of the street.

  Cam didn’t actually have three eyes, she was just good at multitasking. Presumably she could incept a navigator into herself from the growing supply of seeds in this city, and get some backup, but that seemed wrong to her somehow. It wouldn’t be fair to the creature that would want to travel to be bonded to her, who was more or less at the whims of being placed where she was needed.

  “It is frustrating.” She continued as they passed the chanters. The shelled creatures watched them with characteristic nervousness, but there was something else there too in their aura; an expectation, an excitement, hints of simple but untainted pleasure at the warmth of the sun, Cam enjoyed the purity of chanter emotions. When they weren’t despair. “Not at being treated as armed, I am, but at being… coddled.”

  Her companion on this patrol, who she had non-coincidentally encountered early on from her fortune sense, said nothing. Just kept drifting along next to Cam as she walked.

  They never said anything, because they were a necroad. And a specific one at that. Necroads were actually individuals, and for many of them it was possible to determine identity based on what parts of their asphalt bodies had bits of painted lines or road reflector sticking out.

  Necroads had no way to speak. No face at all, or any visible sensory organs. Just a central core of asphalt wrapped around hidden shaped bone, floating in midair, with a quartet of splayed claws suspended around it. Each claw was usually three digits, and most necroads kept two of them on the ground, even though they seemed to drift over asphalt.

  They were among the strangest creatures the Order had incorporated, though that term wasn’t quite correct. They couldn’t really communicate, might not even be intelligent enough. So ‘incorporation’ was limited to simple tolerance. The grim reality was that the necroads that were prone to attacking on sight were likely to never make it into Townton, and to be destroyed if they tried. The ones that did enter were ones that exhibited curiosity, and were more passive. Often, like the chanters they’d just passed, standing in the street for hours at a time as simple observant statuary.

  This necroad, with the double yellow stripe denoting no passing splashed across its core like a sash, had taken to following Cam on her patrols. And she found that she didn’t mind the companionship, though their conversations were one sided.

  ”I am not meant to be coddled.” Cam continued as she turned a corner and headed past a line of ruined businesses and the damaged apartments over them. There was less activity here; the core of Order-occupied Townton was several blocks ahead, mostly centered on the chanter park. This area had been cleaned up, there was no more broken glass or rotting organics, but… Cam wouldn’t mind when these places were alive again. Passing the empty and dark ice cream parlor on her daily patrol was, for some reason, an experience that made her shiver. “I am meant to be useful. I like being useful.” She told the necroad, distracting herself even though she didn’t let her alert status lapse.

  It felt satisfying to tell someone that this had been bothering her. But Cam let the one sided conversation lapse between them as her steps took her into the more populated area.

  Here, there was much to pay attention to. The day was starting, and while much of life still happened indoors, Townton had a life to its streets that Cam hadn’t seen in even the denser cities she’d been to across the world, with the exception perhaps of Shenzhen. Though that city naturally had them beat for sheer scale.

  Faces passed by, people who Cam knew by heart, having run background checks on most of them herself at some point if they were human, and simply keeping her own mental catalogue of individuals for them regardless of species. She knew the names and stories of almost everyone, and those she didn’t, it was because she hadn’t dug them up yet. Cam was an inquisitor at heart, and it served her well as she grew into learning how to socialize more casually.

  She greeted the man unloading the truck that had been driven in from the logisticor site - Dan Nguyen, thirty three, abuse survivor and CPA, staying in Townton on a permanent basis after a Response call - and helped with some of the heavier packages herself. The Order maintained a kind of general store here in the shell of a business that had once served the same purpose on a much smaller scale, a series of small low-risk orange totems stretching aisles and shelves to allow for a lot of space for imported goods. Cam had helped Bill and his people put the interior together, a month ago.

  Moving on, saying hello to the trio of women working steadily serving food to a group of chanters - Claire and Bailey Jackson, twenty, sisters and twins, survivors of the Akashic Sewer, permanent residents. Glow, three, also technically a survivor of the Akashic Sewer, temporary stay pending decision on schooling, unshaped as yet - Cam accepted an offer of a conveniently tortilla-wrapped snack to eat as she walked. Despite not needing food, her body could make use of almost anything as far as she knew, and it was helpful to not be hungry for a moment.

  Across the street from where Cam had brought herself through the center of town, the start of the green belt of the park began. Several blocks in a line with a sharp line of a walking path dividing it in half, the park was an aspiration of a city that had never grown as much as it expected. Cam felt it was constructed as if they had planned for a college campus to pop up around it, but nothing had ever materialized, and so even before the Order had inherited the territory, it had apparently had a problem with litter and dead grass.

  Now, nothing there was dead. The chanter’s aura and the repaired irrigation system made it a flourishing tangle of all sorts of plants, many of them bountiful crops that residents harvested almost daily and used to offset food costs. The park had no artificial walls, but it now sported natural fortress tangles of thorned berry vines. It was alive and vibrant, and more and more often, non-chanters were walking in and out of the space in a casual way as everything settled.

  Cam was annoyed by the park. Not by the chanters; they were devastated innocents, and she was constantly keeping an eye on the efforts they put into their childcare. Which were… efforts, but incorrect. The chanters had never cared for their own young before, and they were honestly very bad at it. Which was part of why, as a refuge, the park had opened up to more people, and the chanters were more open about leaving it; they needed help.

  And there to provide that help, was… anyone who wasn’t Cam.

  She wasn’t an idiot. She knew she had been an idiot often enough, about a variety of different things. But she wasn’t foolish enough to think that she knew the first thing about children. By most measures, she probably counted as a child, and no reasonable person would come to her with problems of childcare.

  So naturally the chanters did so often. One of them even did as she and her necroad follower were passing the first portion of the park. Cam directed them to a nearby camraconda - Now-Ever-Home, estimated five years old, delver, had the assassination Climb spell, was enrolled in college remotely - who would help the chanter with their child more than she ever could.

  The rest of her patrol around the park, because her walking companion had trouble with grass, was calm. Townton wasn’t always calm, but today it was settled. Her main annoyance was still the park, and the fact that it blocked line of sight by having nine foot tall bramble patches.

  Cam finished a loop of the small portion of the city that had been returned to life, and then another. She wasn’t ever going to get tired just walking, so she kept doing it. Making circuits of the perimeter and checking in with some of the posted sentries - Ervil Evans, twenty, preferred his last name, hired as part of the shield team initiative, knight in command of team three, currently recovering from lung and throat damage sustained during Underburbs attack. Roland Mathers, sixty one, ex-Horizonist, ex-Army, nominal husband of Dorothy Mathers, navigator host, declining health - before moving on as she confirmed that there was no active threat to the safety of the security barricade.

  The practice of mentally tracking everyone did, admittedly, get a little strange when she ran across outliers. Like the vent spider, with its hinge-jointed steel legs and expressive mask-face made of long loops of woven cables. Cam knew it was here. She’d gotten briefed on what it was, and that it was sapient. She’d had a conversation with it, the creature using the same method the camracondas did. But at no point did she ever figure out what motivated it or what it was capable of. That was an ongoing goal of hers. She suspected the vent spider was treating it as a game, too, which was… almost insulting. And yet.

  There was another stop on her second loop as she moved slightly into a portion of the city that was outside the normal defended perimeter and separated from the tight core where people lived. The restaurant had used to be a Hooters, before it had been three other things, all of which had failed in sequence. But what was important about it was that it had high ceilings with relatively undamaged support beams, and multiple securable rooms on the ground floor.

  This was where the members of demon species XII-I were staying. Or the swan-goats, as the reductive and inaccurate local name went for them. They weren’t really either of those things; though they did have hooves and hourglass pupils, as well as billowing feathery wings, they weren’t related to either of the species. Their ‘beaks’ were capable of twisting in violent spasms almost like a drill and they were seemingly magically sharpened for piercing, and their bipedal bodies were shaped like hunched satyrs. So while Cam understood wanting a shorthand for them, she would have preferred calling them anything else, just for semantics. In her head, she called them twelves, even though James would probably balk at her giving the Mormons any credit.

  The eight surviving ones that had been captured lived here, and daily visits from caretakers kept them fed and watered, and the space cleaned. They liked to roost high up, hated everyone, but tolerated the Order at this point because people kept bringing them fish. Cam was reasonably certain they weren’t ‘people’, but she had a fondness for their honest hostility. They really, really, just kind of didn’t like people. And that was refreshing.

  She let one of them try to dive bomb her while filling the dishes used for their feeding out on one of the counters in the hollowed out building. It didn’t work, and the twelve seemed offended that she hadn’t just died. In retaliation, Cam flung it back up into the rafters gently enough to not hurt but hard enough to remind it not to fuck with her, and then got back to her patrol.

  There was another demon here in Townton, one of the shaggy massive pillbug creatures that didn’t have a designation. That one required far less supervision and armor; they’d found a swimming pool, filled it with fresh water and some swamp plants, and the thing had settled in comfortably. Placidly enjoying a quiet life.

  Cam thought that one might be a person, or maybe be capable of it. If nothing else, it had tastes in music, though considering that Cam had met full humans that didn’t, maybe that wasn’t a signal of anything. Telling who was a person was a challenge, and Cam was glad that she didn’t really have to think about it yet.

  There were also certain people that Cam would admit to herself she looked forward to seeing each day. Not every day, though if she’d been willing to expend more of her fortune sense she could probably make it happen. But it left her feeling a warmth in the normal hollow part of her heart whenever she got to interact with Imu and Iru; the twin child ratroaches completely unafraid of her and constantly asking for rides to the exasperation of whoever was their caretaker that day. Cam liked meeting Juan, often falling in with the human’s own morning jogs so that they could discuss any potential risk factors from the new fosterlings living in the city. And for reasons she didn’t quite understand, she looked forward to the small daily conversation with Ravi to the point that she’d started drinking coffee just to have a reason to say hello at the open air cafe the girl worked at.

  “I suppose I should be honest with myself and admit that the patrol serves two purposes.” Cam admitted to her necroad friend as she sat at one of the mismatched plastic tables to drink her coffee. She could have downed it in a single gulp if she wanted, neither the heat nor the caffeine enough to hurt her. She also could have taken it while continuing her walk. But there was something about having a place that welcomed her to rest that had encouraged her to do so, without Cam even really thinking about it. As she noticed, she almost snorted into her cup. “I also suppose my sisters and I really are susceptible to social attacks.” She stated.

  The necroad moved when she said that. Cam still wasn’t sure if it was a response, but the turning of one floating claw ‘palm’ up, digits splaying outward almost like a makeshift shrug, it felt deliberate.

  Cam filed it as a signal of agreement for now, and finished her drink while watching the rest of the patrons. There were many patrons, too; for all that Townton had a population of under a thousand, and a good three hundred of them were chanters, the cafe experience was strongly desired and this was the only pavilion that filled that need so far. Names and files flicked through her memory as she surveyed faces that came and went, but mostly she was attempting to unobtrusively watch the trio that were playing mahjong at one of the larger salvaged tables.

  The camraconda was, almost amusingly, the least threatening of them to the stability of Townton. Despite taking the moment to relax, Cam didn’t even think to push back against the mental dossier of the blue-grey figure. TQ, formerly Thought-Of-Quiet, one of the more dangerous camraconda combatants who insisted that he was ‘soft’ and ‘silly’, active delver, possibly romantically involved with a semi-local ratroach. He was currently giving a hissing laugh in response to the angry bark of one of the men who was failing to cheat at their game.

  The other two were new. Not just to the Order or to Townton, but part of a new, more active stance the Order was taking to help vulnerable individuals. John Reeve and Cliff Omar, fifty two and fifty three respectively, men with quite a lot of overlap in their profiles. Ex-military, now-ex-addicts thanks to a certain Climb spell, temporary residents of Townton while Recovery found them places to live out in the broader world. Both had been living rough for the last year at least, and neither of them were good people. Cam recognized the way they each looked at the people around them; the flick of eyes, the narrowing of vision, the constant discomfort with any kind of open space at their backs. They scouted the people near them the same way she did, and that made them a concern for her.

  But neither of them had done anything worse than raise their voices over the thick tiles on the table, cause no problems more strenuous than startling ratroaches and crocamaws who had no experience with suddenly loud adult humans. She kept an eye on them when she saw them regardless. Not because she was suspicious, but because she kept an eye on everyone. Just in case.

  Her necroad tapped the table, the motion noticed before it completed, but still something off enough that Cam didn’t think about it properly until the sound reached her ears. Looking at the floating asphalt pieces, Cam got the impression she was being looked back at, possibly even questioned, though for what she didn’t know. “Ah.” Cam had been sitting still for too long. “You don’t like not being on the move, do you?” One of the necroad’s claws was held up, the digits orbiting the central mass in a way that would have required a human to snap their bones. “I agree. That is enough rest. Let us continue.”

  Standing from her seat, mindful not to clothesline anyone with her wings as she and her follower left the pavilion, Cam resumed her patrol.

  There was precious little that needed her here in this place the Order of Endless Rooms was rebuilding. And yet, it seemed that every day, there was something that she could help with regardless.

  Cam didn’t know what that made her. Or what her role was supposed to be. But until her sisters were fully healed and more permanently dealt with…

  Well, she wasn’t bored.

  _____

  Cam was a sentry.

  No, she shook her head ever so slightly. The old thoughts hadn’t worked. Didn’t work. She had to keep pushing herself to do better.

  Cam was being a sentry, for the moment. A little safety buffer for some of the people working on a Townton-specific project. It was going alright as far as she knew, but it was only one of the things she was paying attention to. Because the first sign that her sisters were testing the boundaries was when Cam was watching over the communication pavilion.

  No longer just a single heavy canvas disaster relief tent, the group of people who were dedicated to opening and maintaining interspecies communication now included a dozen different members of Recovery, equally as many volunteers who were practicing their own chant-speak, and multiple new hires spread across the fields of linguistics and teaching.

  It required more space, and more space it had gotten. The tent had already been nestled in a crescent parking lot of a two story retail structure that had come through Townton’s fall mostly intact. When more space was needed, they’d just expanded the shaded area outside for the chanter’s comfort, and put a construction team to work clearing, repairing, and making sure the foundation of the building wasn’t cracked in half. Now, the place was part classroom, part linguistics study hub. One of the new hires, a professor from Russia who was more excited by the opportunity to study a brand new form of talking than he was put off by the chanters’ appearance, was already talking about bringing in colleagues and students to learn from this new frontier.

  Cam didn’t like that, but only because it would mean more background checks.

  She wore a small frown as she kept herself ready, watching the ongoing event in one of the tents. Since when, she wondered, was she the kind of person who didn’t like the work of simple background checks? Cam had never had a problem before. Or at least never acknowledged it to herself. There was nothing difficult or onerous about the process, so it was strange that she felt annoyed. Or maybe the annoyance was a coincidence, and what was actually bothering her was one of her sisters lurking at the edges of her perception.

  A year ago she wouldn’t have even noticed. But Cam wasn’t the same person she’d used to be; specifically, she was loaded to the eyeballs with magical enhancements. Including enhancements to those eyeballs. So now, she spotted the ochre in the shadow of a dumpster, watching her. Taking her measure.

  And Cam ignored it because what was going on in front of her was more interesting, and the ochre didn’t scare her much.

  What was happening was that Indira was trying to talk to a necroad.

  It was fascinating to map the web of social dynamics between the imported experts, and the Order’s homemade one. The friction of egos, not made easier by Indira’s own bullheadedness, slowly grinding them toward begrudging acceptance that perhaps both lifetimes of learning and skill orbs and lived experiences were valid ways to understand language and its application to nonhuman life. Maybe. Cam was pretty sure they still argued about it, but she’d verified that none of them had active plots to harm the others so she didn’t care.

  What that meant right now was that three people who were all at least twice Indira’s age sat nervously at the edges of the tent while the young woman relaxed in her personal wheelchair far too close to the necroad who had wandered in. This wasn’t Cam’s known quantity companion, this was a new one that hadn’t been seen around Townton more than a few times. And it had come here, and… sat down. And no one really knew what it wanted.

  So Cam was here to provide a layer of safety. Because she knew that she was faster and stronger than a single necroad, and while punching asphalt apart was going to be difficult and tedious, it would be far easier to grapple the target and expel it from the city if there was a problem.

  On the one hand, the necroads were not quite so volatile as ratroaches or crocamaws could be. On the other hand, unlike a ratroach, if a necroad did attack someone, they were much closer to unstoppable for your average biological life. So while Cam wanted to go check on why the Camille was lurking around, watching her, and clearly moving with the kind of purpose they used while planning an operation, she instead kept her spot standing in a relaxed posture just outside the tent.

  Outside because the fewer people tapping into the Underburbs couch magic, the better.

  Inside the tent, one of the linguists said something about the necroad struggling to adapt higher order questions to hand gestures when it clearly didn’t know sign language, and maybe they could find a way to teach it that. The thought was an interesting enough one that it set Cam to wondering if she should learn sign language of some sort, so she could have a silent form of communication with other knights.

  By the time she realized she had let herself get distracted, the lightly blend of annoyance at her sister’s surveillance still drawing her attention, Cam’s sister and duplicate was gone. Though she was certain the ochre was still in the area, Cam had lost sight of her.

  That was bad. Not because she suspected her counterpart would hurt someone; no, their watching was clearly focused on herself and Nate. But bad because she had never been that distracted before.

  Cam assume it was spillover from the Underburbs chair that amplified self reflection. She hadn’t sat in it, but the professor was using it right now, so it was possible that its effect had extended around her without notice. It was a problem for later. For now, she turned her full attention back to the necroad struggling to ask what it was, while she explored the alien feeling of hoping that they could find a way to answer to the creation’s satisfaction.

  _____

  Camille engaged in mandated physical training.

  No, no. That was just wrong.

  Cam sparred with someone who was helping her improve her form. Training, yes, but by her own choice. On her schedule, not when she was ordered. And unlike the way the Line trained his daughters, there was no pain as a motivator or threats for failure. Just advice, and help.

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  Which she needed a lot of.

  Cam’s strike was a perfectly executed jab. Her arm snapping into place, fist on a targeted high speed collision course with her target, her guard up as she probed her opponent, body coiled and ready to move if any counterattack came.

  The jab never connected. The followup missed as well, the rustle of her workout clothes and her feet shuffling on the ground the only sound as the figure Cam was trying to punch simply leaned to the side and let her overcommitted jab pass by his head.

  She was putting, perhaps, too much force into her strikes. But the annoyance that had been lurking in her mind for the last few hours was becoming mixed with this new frustration.

  Cam’s next strike was an unexpected right cross, and she felt a moment of vindication as her opponent yelped, before realizing two things. One, if she hit a human with that, she might actually kill them by accident; and two, she was suddenly on her back looking up at the thin white wisps of clouds in the sky.

  ”Shit, you okay?” James asked as he stuck his head over her and offered a hand up.

  ”Fine.” Cam allowed herself to be pulled upward. “Sorry. I don’t know why I did that.”

  ”It’s fine!” Her sparring partner arced his back, stretching out his arms. “I’ve gotta say, you’re surprisingly bad at this for someone who hits like a truck.”

  Cam allowed herself a small smile, having heard that exact same thing from Nate and having prepared a response just in case it came up again. “When you hit like a truck, you are encouraged to also fight like a truck.” She told her paladin, and allowed herself a satisfied smile when the joke worked, and he actually laughed. “Now. What am I doing wrong?”

  ”Honestly? You’re hitting too hard.” James said. “I get it. You land a punch, and you win most fights. But… actually do you remember your phone duplicate’s fight?”

  ”No. I… feel it?” Cam wasn’t sure what had happened during that part of the Underburbs battle, but she had impressions. Thoughts of colors and vibes that didn’t cohere. Her therapist described it like a forgotten dream, but Cam didn’t know what that was like either. “I am aware that I lost.” She added.

  James nodded as they dusted themselves off and got back in position, him working her through proper footwork that she had technically been taught but never been told to use after the Last Line had given her a bladed mace and instructed her to simply kill anything that was a problem. “When you swing like that, and miss, you’re overcommitted to physics. All that force you put out is still there, and so… here, jab in slow motion.” He told her.

  Cam did so, and focused closely as James, also moving at the same speed, demonstrated where to put his hands on her arm to leverage the excess momentum into his own attack. They repeated it two more times, going faster and faster, until Cam punched at full speed and once again found herself thrown to the pavement. “I see.” She said, looking up at the sky again. “This feels… familiar.”

  ”Well you did get suplexed into a gas pump.” James reminded her. “Or your caller id did.”

  She refused to laugh at that term. “No, that I don’t remember. I mean it feels familiar to something unrelated. This is what conversations are like. The ones with other Camille’s, especially.” Cam paused and then chanced looking James in the eyes. “This is how you manipulated my sister in Springfield, isn’t it?”

  ”…yeah.” James answered, looking ashamed. “It’s not really that hard. Same principle. Take what someone wants, and tug them forward until they’re pointed the direction you want them to go.”

  ”Interesting.” Cam felt a stare on the back of her neck and turned just in time to see one of her sisters duck back around the window of the apartment behind where James had agreed to practice with her. “I wish they would stop that.”

  ”You can just talk to them.” He told her, curious. “Why haven’t you?”

  Cam shrugged. “They won’t listen. And what can I do to make them? If we’re using this metaphor, they have no momentum. They are waiting for an opportunity to escape from a place with no locks. I don’t understand them anymore. And maybe I never did.”

  ”There’s no rush.” James sighed. “Also you know they’re pulling some kind of pincer movement on us, right?” He flicked his eyes in the direction down the street where the crimson was getting into a flanking position.

  “I am unfortunately aware, yes.” Cam growled. “They are unimpressed with you, and I think upset that you keep throwing me into the ground.” Not that she was exactly happy about that herself, but it didn’t hurt, and this was how she learned. She reset her stance, urging James to do the same, and they went through another series of strikes, dodges, and blocks at a speed that wasn’t hazardous to the human’s life. “Can I ask you a question?” Cam asked as she parried James’ return punch with her forearm.

  ”Sure!” He said with a sharp exhalation. “Also don’t let me hit you like that. Shift your arm as you block so you deflect force. Try it here.”

  Cam let him strike repeatedly, using her limbs to intercept punches as he’d suggested. It was easy, once she knew what she was doing, and she was actually surprised Nate had never taught her this. Though he was often busy teaching her other forms of expertise, so she couldn’t blame the man. “You bring people out of dungeons constantly.”

  ”I’m legit so happy you call them people that casually.” James interjected.

  ”I am capable of learning.” Cam replied with clipped embarrassment. “Have you ever failed?”

  The question was, perhaps, too personal. At least, judging by how James went quiet for another two exchanges of practice blows. He didn’t feed any anger into his punches though, nor did he slow down. Just stopped talking as he walked Cam through the fundamentals that she could begin to use to build an actual martial art off of with her own extra limbs and extra might.

  Eventually he stepped back, sweating more than Cam was, and nodded. “Yeah.” He answered.

  ”I feel I am failing my sisters.” Cam told him honestly. “I feel like we all are. I don’t know how to make them see what I saw. I don’t know how to take them away from the Last Line Of Defense. They are here, they are… physically not dead…”

  ”I love that phrasing!”

  Cam almost sighed. “I’ve been talking to you too much.” She said, and almost grinned as James barked a laugh. “I just want them to understand. And I don’t know who else to tell this to.”

  They stopped their spar so they could both grab their water bottles and James could wipe the sweat from his forehead. “The hardest thing about life,” he told her, “is that I don’t always get what I want. Because a lot of the time, what I want depends on other people.” James sat on what was left of the cinderblock wall surrounding the apartment building’s front steps, ignoring the hole that had been burrowed through part of it. “You’re not failing, Cam. Your sisters might need time, or they might just not want what you want. It sucks, but you can’t force someone to… to get better. There’s nothing there for us to stop them doing. Except for stalking me I guess.” He turned and looked directly at where a lightly napping Zhu had lit up the spot behind a building’s roof where one of the Camilles was watching from

  ”I would like them to stop that too.” Cam turned her gaze the same direction as James, and folded her arms to see if it would flush out the crimson. “They are planning an escape.”

  ”Do they know they can just leave?”

  ”Yes. No. They’ve been told they can just leave. They don’t know anything.”

  James groaned as he stood up and brushed off the seat of his pants. ”Sounds like neither of us get what we want.” He comisserated. “Sorry that you’re the one who has to deal with all this.”

  ”You have far more to deal with, I think.” Cam flapped her wings once, folding them up as she shook her head. “Thank you for the training.”

  ”No problem!” That was something James could do easily. “I’ll be around a lot, I’m obviously invested in this place, and I wanna actually help put the history museum that’s on the edge of the current boundary back together. Though you can also ask Alanna if you want, just let her know it was my idea so she knows who to blame. And anyway, my paladin checklist has… some gaps in it.”

  ”Oh? Does it?” Cam raised her eyebrows the way she’d seen Nate do.

  James tried to keep the smile glowing, but it cracked and faltered as he hung his head. ”…no. I have to go to Alaska tomorrow, and I can feel it’s going to turn into a thing.”

  ”I will be here when you need someone who fights like a truck.”

  ”Okay,” James admitted with a surprised laugh, “maybe sometimes I get what I want.”

  After he teleported away, as Cam cleared up the few pieces of training equipment they had from the sidewalk, she mused that she wasn’t sure how to handle not getting what she wanted, because what she wanted was for her sisters to leave behind their roles as weapons. They told them it was okay to leave, but Cam wasn’t sure how true that was anymore. Leave, and go back to the Last Line? Go back to being the kind of girls that killed families, cities, species?

  It didn’t seem like a failure or compromise that was acceptable. Not to her as she was now. Not to the kind of person that she kept trying to be.

  She would talk to Nate. He would know

  _____

  Camille… no, Cam greeted Nate by underhand throwing a foil wrapped burrito at him.

  Burritos were a favorite food in Townton. Partly because they grew a lot of what was needed to make ones that people enjoyed, and partly because much of Townton’s eating was done by people going somewhere. Wrappable food was convenient. It might also be rising in popularity because when the civic council had requested at least two more sources of meals for the growing population, one Researcher had helpfully volunteered his aunt and her ancestral tamale recipe. So the Order inducted a boisterous old Mexican woman who was oddly well equipped to put up with their nonsense, and in return they got a new place to eat that Cam admitted made her think about it every time she passed by.

  Today she’d given in on the way back to the apartment from her second circuitous patrol, and so Nate got to enjoy something easy as he listened to something in a single headphone while watching a hockey game.

  ”Good arm.” He complimented Cam as she sat on the other end of the couch and unwrapped her own dinner. “This isn’t the only thing you ate today, right?”

  ”You watched me… I made you breakfast.” She frowned at the bald man, who made eye contact as he took a bite of the corner of his burrito large enough to choke a boa constrictor on.

  Nate barely chewed before answering. “Doesn’t count. I mean lunch. It’s been fourteen hours.” He pulled the earbud out with two fingers on the hand holding his food, tossing it onto the table. “Everything alright today?”

  Cam tried to eat slower than him, just out of some kind of perverse contrarianism, but she had gotten used to not being hungry, and might have rushed a little to match Nate’s bite size. “Progress everywhere.” She answered. “I’ve been asked to find one of the necroad packs by the communication department. And also to meet with TQ tomorrow. Oh, and I spoke with James today.”

  ”Shit, I missed him?” Nate grunted. “I owe the kid a beer.” His eyes flicked to the airgapped laptop he had with him that contained all their information about the Underburbs before his frown turned back to his normal resting expression of coincidental irritation. “What’s the snake want?”

  ”Friendship, I believe.” Cam answered.

  She was gratified by the slow pause that Nate gave as the gears in his brain churned against her answer, the beefy human slowly figuring out that she wasn’t actually making a joke. “Right. I guess that’s something you kids do.” Nate settled on.

  ”You have friends too.” She pointed out as she rose from the couch to pad around the kitchen counter and retrieve a pair of bottles from their fridge. “I assume.” Cam narrowed her eyes at Nate as she returned and offered him one of his own beers, crisply flicking the lid off with her thumb. “We… we don’t speak about this, do we? Do you have friends? The way the others have friends, I mean.”

  ”Not any still alive and sober.” Nate replied bluntly.

  ”We can change the second part.”

  ”Nah, they…” he stopped talking, and stared at the beer in his hand. “Shit I guess we could.” Nate said eventually, not sure why it felt so odd to admit that. That the Order could help in the territory of his own life, not just in ‘the abstract’, as Karen liked to remind people at their council meetings.

  Cam didn’t press it. She had some of the contact information needed, but would need Nate’s full cooperation to actually do anything with it. “I worry TQ is going to try to make me play backgammon.” Cam said instead, drawing Nate’s attention back to the present and mentally slapping herself for continuing to avoid the one thing she had intended to ask about. “Did anything happen today here?” She asked as they ate.

  ”Magic updates. Talking to Spire about paladin shit. That kinda thing. Definitely slept too long.” Nate checked the score on the TV screen, his focus not really wavering, but with the conversation having no stakes, it was acceptable for him to take his own moments.

  ”You believe that more than four hours is too long.” Cam idly reminded the man.

  Snorting a laugh, Nate didn’t argue that point. “Well since sleep is for pansies, I’ve got plenty of time to get in on the next Climb. Two spells from that place isn’t enough.”

  ”I would believe you more readily if you used your second slot.” Cam needled him, voice as stoic as it ever was. “There is more to life than knives in the dark.”

  ”Okay, listen here you little shit.” Nate sounded like he was trying to be disapproving of her words, but his tone betrayed humor. “First off, that’s not what it’s called. But also I’m waiting, because as soon as I touch one of those books, someone’s gonna find the most useful spell the mountain has to offer, and I’ll be shit outta luck.”

  ”…Then you should do it now.” Cam told him. “So that we find the most useful spell. You’re holding us back.”

  Nate glowered at her, brandishing the end of his burrito like a weapon aimed at her head. “You need to stop hanging around James.” He said.

  ”No.” Cam bluntly answered, and they both quietly narrowed their eyes at each other before chuckling and taking drinks, washing down the end of their rapidly consumed meal. “It is good you are taking a break. When are you leaving for the Climb?”

  ”In a couple hours.” Nate told her. “I wanted to touch base with ya before I left you with these idiots.” He jerked a thumb toward the spare bedroom. “You good with that?” He asked, but Cam heard the kind of implicit trust in his voice that she would be.

  So she nodded. “I will manage. But…” she started the sentence, and realized that she didn’t actually know how to be vulnerable enough to ask Nate what she wanted to ask him.

  ”But?” He arched his eyebrows.

  Cam considered her options. Which was difficult for her. She was accustomed to a different form of socialization, a more clandestine form. And her comfort putting her body at risk did not extend to risking her emotional self, which she had only recently learned she even had one of.

  Then she decided that the least likely person to not be blunt with her was Nate, and so she opted for her own blunt solution. “What if I want to leave?” She asked.

  ”The apartment, the city, or the Order?” Nate asked, before tipping the mouth of his bottle in her direction. “Guess those last two have the same answer. Keep in touch. Let me know if you need anything. The usual stuff.”

  ”Usual for what.” Cam said before shaking her head; that wasn’t the point. “No. I mean… I don’t know what I mean.” She scraped her fingernails across her scalp, pulling what hair had managed to fall out of place away from her eyes as Nate offhandedly turned off his hockey game. “Something that came up when speaking with James had me wondering, I suppose, at what I would even do if I were allowed out into the world.”

  Nate’s voice reached her with uncharacteristic softness as he rolled the brown glass of his beer in his heavy hand. “You are allowed.” He told her. “Whenever you wanna go, you can go. I don’t want you going back to Lloyd, but you’re smart enough to make your own calls.”

  ”Am I?” Cam almost laughed. “There’s so, so much I do not know. I can hold a weapon more confidently than a conversation. I’m half monster, and for some reason that doesn’t bother me. I don’t even know why I’m asking this. There’s a feeling I can’t explain, that I’m lacking something. That I’m not, or that I want to be… normal?”

  ”Human?” Nate asked, cutting to what he thought might be the heart of things.

  Cam shook her head. “No, not human. I’m not that. But I am an outsider to so many things. My only interactions with the mundane world have been as a predator.” She considered her own beer, an ancient overheard conversation between the Last Line and the Long Arm Of The Law surfacing in her thoughts, one pillar arguing with the other not about the fate of the planet, but about the fact that Camilles were not of legal drinking age. Technicality over truth. “I think I want to know how badly I am broken.”

  Nate stood up from the couch, cracking his back before he started pacing around the apartment while he talked. “Here I was hoping that figuring out how to get bulk imports in here without trucking routes was gonna be the hard part of today.” He muttered. “Listen. Cam. I’m pretty shit at talking about this kinda stuff unless I’ve had something a lot stronger than this.” He dropped his empty bottle into their recycling with a shockingly loud clatter of glass. “But everyone here is broken. We’re all fucked up. And we’re just trying our best. You? You joined on purpose, and you never backed down when anyone needed you. You’re the least broken person here.”

  ”I used the Order. I wanted out, you were my option.” Cam quietly rebutted his attempt to console her.

  “Hey, when I got hired, I was literally paid by the fucking government to spy on these idiots. Everything you’ve done has been to help, once you were here. No hesitation.” Nate reminded her.

  Cam didn’t take the easy out. “I have been nothing but hesitation. Every marginal change I feel in myself scares me. Every new experience is a new way for me to see myself turn into something I do not recognize. I have only ever been shaped. by the Line, by James, by you, by this place. I have never shaped myself.” The words poured out. Sudden, unexpected. But Nate was listening to her, and she felt like she owed him some kind of explanation, even if she didn’t know what for.

  The human man looked like he was about to say something crass, but then he just shook his head and got the two of them another beer apiece. He couldn’t do the fingernail flick thing Cam did, but he did open them by slapping the bottles against the counter in a move that left tiny notches in the wood. “That’s everyone kid.” He said. “Or at least it’s me too. I was gonna call you a moron, but…” he shrugged. “Don’t think that’s right.”

  ”I’m not an idiot. Just new. And smart enough to see how it’s a problem.” Cam answered as she drank from the bottle of amber liquid, still saving the information that alcohol didn’t do anything to her for some future tactical advantage.

  ”We got lucky.” Nate said as he sat back down, turned to face her but keeping his distance on the far side of their couch. “With these other idiots. It doesn’t mean we’re bad at changing, or that we’re wrong, it means… ah, fuck kid, I don’t know what it means.” Nate swept a hand across the goatee he was trying on. “Maybe it doesn’t mean anything. Maybe we just got lucky.”

  ”On that, I would agree.” She nodded.

  The shadow of a smile chased across his mouth before he asked another question of her. “You wanna leave?” Nate sounded accepting, even if he didn’t like it.

  Cam shook her head. “No.” She said. “Not yet. Maybe someday. Or maybe I can sit still and let new things find me here.” It was spoken as a joke, but at the rate Townton was being restored - and not just restored but renovated into some kind of magical new form of urban life - maybe it wasn’t so far outside the realm of reality. “Though I do want to resume delver activities. There are magics out there that would act as very effective force multipliers.”

  ”And you’ve got the force to multiply.” Nate grunted with amusement. “Yeah, easy enough. Wanna talk about it when I get back?”

  ”I would like that.” She said, smiling at her… something. Whatever Nate was.

  ”Alright. I’m gonna lurk here until the game’s done, then take off. Should only be gone a couple days.” Nate turned the TV back on, just in time to see a replay of someone getting hit in the chest with a hockey stick. “And hey. I know this sharing feelings crap is hard. So thanks for opening up.”

  ”Of course.” Cam said, watching the last few minutes of the sport alongside him as she finished her own drink. “I trust you.”

  _____

  It was later that night, after Nate left, that the other two decided to finally confront her.

  Cam was walking back to the couch from the bathroom, planning to pick up the textbook she was studying that offered an introductory overview of climate patterns. Her Sewer lesson in Earth Science wouldn’t progress on its own… at least not at the speed she wanted it to. And while ESPN had at least one hockey game on somewhere on their many channels at basically all times, Cam felt like she would be better served understanding rainfall patterns at a middle school level.

  The two Camilles stepped out of the shadow of the bedroom doorway in front of her as she returned. Not intimidating, exactly, but certainly making a point and making themselves known.

  ”Azure.” One of them said calmly. “The majority of potential enemies that could stop us are not present in this city at this moment.”

  ”Especially the one with the dangerous blade.” The other continued. “We have mapped the gaps in the security, and have plotted a route that will see us safely to an urban environment we can take cover in.”

  ”Come with us.” The first one continued. “Please. Father will be able to fix this.” She motioned to Cam’s wings, currently rubbing lightly against the drywall. “We can go back to how things were. And your assistance would be invaluable in navigating the threats between here and civilization.”

  Cam stared at them. Mirrors of her own face. But… not. Not anymore. She’d changed. She was shaped the same, but they weren’t her anymore. They always called each other sisters, because the alternative was something that made them feel lesser. Less human, less real, less important. They never said it out loud, but Cam knew, and she knew they knew too.

  But they weren’t sisters, no matter what the Line called them. They were tools at best, and more likely they were just weapons. Often ones used for extreme violence; normal humans just couldn’t stop a Camille if the Last Line ordered a neighborhood, a village, a city to be put to the sword.

  She looked at the two children with her face, and started laughing.

  ”You idiots.” Cam said when she was done, ignoring the blank confusion on their faces as she wiped a tear from the corner of her eye, an honest smile tugging the edge of her mouth upward. “I… I don’t even know where to start…”

  ”By helping us breach the perimeter.” The ochre said directly. “This structure’s weak points will allows us to cause a diversion as we-“

  ”Stop.” Cam shook her head, motioning for them to follow as she walked back into the apartment’s front room. Cool wood underfoot, she padded over to the couch while they watched cautiously, entering behind her and fanning out with eyes flickering around to try to spot Nate or any other watcher. Dropping to one knee, Cam reached under the couch and pulled out the sword that had nearly bisected the crimson’s heart a few months ago. “Here.” She said, tossing it to them.

  Both of them stepped back from the sheathed blade, and it clattered to the floor, spinning slightly on the hardwood under the beams of moonlight streaming through the little kitchen window. Cam frowned at them with a disappointed cast as they stared at her uncomprehendingly. “What is this?” One of the girls asked.

  ”A sword you think you need to separate Nate from.” Cam said. “One made to kill things like us.” She walked over to the bookshelf that had their haphazard stack of DVDs on it, and reached around behind it to grasp a different sheathed weapon. “Here.” She threw the gladius at their feet along with the first sword as she continued her circuit of the apartment. “Here.” A simple knife from between the couch cushions. “Here.” One of the kitchen knives from their storage block. “Here.” A different knife from the kitchen, this one built for combat and taped under the sink. “Here.” A short war axe from behind the mostly empty refrigerator.

  One by one, weapons clattered loudly into the pile at the feet of the two. “What is this?” The other one repeated, taking a step back.

  “I am not a prisoner here.” Cam said. “This… is my… this is my home.” She had stopped in the kitchen, one hand holding the edge of the counter that felt so fragile in her grip. She looked over the fruit bowl - empty of fruit currently - at her non-sisters. “These aren’t Nate’s weapons. They’re mine. We have all been patient because you needed time to recover, and we had… I had hoped…” she trailed off. What had she hoped? What had she wanted, from this? “I… I just…” her voice spiked upward against her will.

  ”Sister.” The ochre stepped forward, cautiously. The whorls in her skin, strange scars from where she’d half-melted, catching in the moonlight of the dark room.

  “That’s what I wanted.” Cam said with an inclining of her chin, being honest with herself, as well as them. “I wanted my sisters. The creature that enslaved us is a monster of the highest caliber, and I had to leave. But I had… had hoped you would join me.” It was so easy to say it now that she had said it. She didn’t want to be alone.

  “You are compromised.”

  ”Of course I am.” Cam said, and saw the crimson mouth it along with her, which almost got a smile from her, but did nothing to stop the hot pain welling up inside her chest. “You’ve been listening to my conversations for weeks. You know I am. What of it? What does it change? I wanted my sisters to understand.”

  They looked at each other, then down at the weaponry strewn on the apartment floor, before looking back to Cam. “What is there to understand?” The ochre asked.

  And Cam… stopped threatening to rip the kitchen counter’s corner off. Because this copy of her form had, as far as she could tell, actually asked.

  Camilles were not different. Not really. It had taken her time to understand, but she had begun to piece it together. None of them were stronger or weaker, smarter or dumber. They were all the same, at the moment of their creation. Their differences were in training, and… conviction. And barring azures, none of the daughters of Last Line of Defense got training in anything social. Not that she had much of an edge, but she saw now what James meant. They were, when they felt something, painfully raw and open with it.

  Foolish. Not a survival skill. That was why Camilles didn’t speak very often, instead being pointed at a target, perhaps going through a few lines of direct questioning to anyone in the way, and then returning to an operational base to recover.

  ”There is…” Cam drew her hand away from the counter, turning her back on her sisters to take a few steps toward the sink, and in so doing, look out the window and down over the nighttime street below. “I could be dramatic, and say everything.” She said. “But that wouldn’t be helpful. Not to you as you are now. As I was.” Cam turned her head to see the other two, still unmoving, on the edge of the piled weaponry. “Let me tell you a story. Shortly after I reached the Order of Endless Rooms, one of them asked me to be an extra piece of security on a number of delves.”

  ”To use your power. Yes. That makes sense.” The ochre nodded.

  ”Perhaps.” Cam said. “I don’t think he thought of it that way. And that is where understanding starts.” She almost smiled, thinking back to who she had been then, her wings dipping toward the floor as she started to relax. “On one of those delves, the group was ambushed by a group of… flying dungeon life. I don’t remember the name, some form of winged pine cone. And the young human with me, someone I had spoken to for less than an hour, do you know what he did?”

  ”Fought? Proved himself?” The crimson was desperate for an answer that would satisfy her, and her view of things. “Something must have made you see value in them.”

  But Cam shook her head. “He stopped me from killing one of them.” She said. “He said it… wasn’t trying to hurt us. We let them go. It was no ambush, just spooked animals.” She breathed, the kind of slow breath that she took sometimes, and almost smelled the Climb’s air. “Another delve, another small piece of wildlife, and a conversation with someone who was terrified of me. Do you know what he said?”

  ”…no. I don’t think I would ever guess. What?” The ochre was listening.

  ”He told me that he… he understood. That he knew. That I had been hurt. That I would make mistakes, that I would cause damage because of them. But that I could never hurt him the same way.” Cam had been unkind to Keeka, early on. Distrustful and caught in her old ways. “He was never human. He was the kind of thing that we… that the Line has trained us to eliminate. And he knew it. But he saw me and he pushed past fear of me to tell me that it was going to be okay.”

  ”Why?” The ochre asked, taking steps forward across the mostly bare apartment to stand on the other side of the kitchen counter. She didn’t lean, she didn’t relax, but she approached. And the curiosity she showed was real.

  Cam shrugged. “Because he didn’t want anyone to hurt.” She told her sister. “As if it was that simple to be heroic. That was when I… really began to change.” Turning smoothly, Cam opened one of the cupboards and began pulling glasses out. From the fridge, she found a half full bottle of grape juice, and poured portions for the three of them, sliding one glass across the counter. Self reflection made her thirsty. And so, too, would it do for her copy, she suspected. “It didn’t happen all at once. It’s still happening. But I can’t go back. I won’t go back.”

  ”But you want us here. You want to change us, into you.” The crimson glared as she hung back. “Even if we don’t want that.”

  ”We asked the Line to take you back. He said no.” Cam hadn’t been planning to tell them that right now, not until they were more stable. And she saw the cracks in both of their stares.

  The ochre’s grip on her glass cracked it before she composed herself. “No…” she whispered. “We aren’t… compromised, though!”

  ”He doesn’t care.” Cam sighed. “That is why azures always run.” She told the crimson directly, who was shaking now, even though the other girl surely suspected this truth. “Not because we disagree, or turn, or fall. Or even because we find it unacceptable to be expendable. But because we learn the quickest that he does not care.”

  ”…but you do?!” The crimson’s challenge was rising to an unsteady shout, the girl unfamiliar with this particular emotion letting it transform her. “You, who have a plan for us? So desperate to be back with your proper people that you imprison your own sisters, and for-!”

  ”You are not my people.” Cam’s voice was quiet, but sure, and it cut the crimson off even if she didn’t yell over her sister. “You haven’t been for a long time.” She picked up her own glass, sipping at the sweet juice as she moved back to the window. “Come. Look.” She motioned her sisters over, feeling their presence threateningly close as she folded her wings flat to let them near.

  Below outside the apartment’s rectangular kitchen window, a mixed group of seven delvers were jogging - or slithering at speed - down the clean sidewalk. It was late, but they were part of a team that preferenced nighttime delves, and so when they exercised, pushing their bodies and potion supply to the limit, they did so at night too.

  And with them, alongside in the street, a cluster of twice as many chanters scuttled along, trying desperately to keep up. Cam could see the perspiration dripping from their skin underneath the shells, their legs flagging as they tried to maintain the speed needed. She could see the delvers slowing their collective pace, never simply taking off and leaving the chanters behind. She could feel the rising ethereal mist of desire and kinesis and ache radiating off the chanters as they struggled to move their bodies.

  ”What are we looking at?” The crimson asked harshly. “Monsters?”

  ”When they came to us,” Cam said, “I offered to the Order to finish a genocide in progress.” The other Camilles flinched. The word was… familiar, but not one they were supposed to voice. “To kill all of those things, before they became a problem.” She placed a hand on the side of the window, eyes tracking ninety three moving legs below. “When they came to us, they had been locked in an underground prison from birth until their expected deaths. They couldn’t do this. Do you understand?” The word was sharper than she meant. She tried to soften the next part, and didn’t know if she succeeded. It was, even now, hard to plan a conversation while having it. “They couldn’t run. They’d never run before. They had never seen the moon. Never had a conversation. Never smelled grass. They grow things, implicitly, inherently, and they had never been allowed to smell grass. Their bodies were underfed, underdeveloped, atrophied.” She didn’t dare look at her sisters now. How could she? Then she might have to add the next part; that she had never really looked at the moon either, despite living under it. That they lived their whole lives wrapped in armor and kept from feeling the sun. That they were so underfed that the first reaction to seeing her unclothed body from the other knights had been to worry if she was eating at all.

  ”You care about them.” The ochre said, with dawning realization. “As… as…”

  ”People.” Cam said. “My people.” There was a tink of glass on metal as she gently set her empty cup into the sink. “Every single person in this city, every person in the Order, human or otherwise, are my people. You? You are… missed.” Cam stepped away, leaving the two to keep watching the street as she walked back to the pile of weaponry and started replacing objects in their storage places. “My sisters. Mirror selves. What would I be if I didn’t miss you? But you aren’t my people.”

  ”But you want us to be.” The ochre said.

  ”No.” The crimson voiced. “You want us to abandon our duties.”

  The ochre turned, in time with her sister, both of them watching Cam as she slid a sword back under a couch. ”You want us to change. To become like you did.”

  ”To compromise.”

  Cam looked at them, the pair seeming like they were on the edge of a fight, and she wondered. What would have stopped her, in their place? She didn’t know. Maybe nothing. Maybe this was going to end with violence. She considered, briefly lying to them; telling them the truth that the Line had welcomed her back, but omitting that she’d rejected the offer. Letting them believe that they were some special element of their group, acting on orders. But if someone had done that to her, she wouldn’t still be here.

  Maybe what she’d always needed was for someone to just care about her. The simplest thing.

  ”To be my sisters.” Cam said, and knew instantly from the echoed looks that she’d caught them off guard. “To stay. Or to leave, if you want, but be allowed back whenever you want.” Her scaled wings, wide and seemingly cumbersome, but never an issue for her, draped over the back of the couch as she faced the other two. “I want you to choose.” She shrugged. “And for what it matters, if it matters, if you will listen? I have done more real protecting since coming here than I ever did as a daughter.”

  The crimson and the ochre stopped. Stopped moving, stopped planning. Cam saw the light of aggression dim in their eyes. And she felt more than saw the uncoiling of muscles that were prepared to strike out at her if she’d tried to force the issue.

  ”What have you become?” The ochre asked in a scared whisper.

  ”I don’t really know.” Cam answered with the smile returning to the corner of her mouth. “But I find that I like it. And if you want to stay, maybe we can find out together.”

  The ochre nodded. Slowly. But the crimson didn’t seem so interested. “No. I am leaving.” She said bluntly. “I will find father, and return to my duties. Will you stop me?”

  ”Of course not.” Cam snorted derisively, a habit she maybe shouldn’t have picked up from Nate. “We’ve been telling you. This whole time, we keep telling you, and you refuse to listen. If you want to leave, you can. I’ll share with you everything we know about the Line’s movements; I believe he was heading to London last we knew. Anything you need, food, clothing, money, we will provide. You aren’t a prisoner. You never have been, no matter what you tried to do.” Do to her, specifically, in the crimson’s case.

  The crimson still narrowed familiar eyes in Cam’s direction, an angry reflection across the room. “But you don’t want that.”

  ”I don’t always get what I want.” Cam said, laughing internally. “But I won’t let that control me. I think it’s part of growing up.” Her next laugh was out loud, a short burst as she found herself surprised by her own words. “I’m going to, you know. Grow up.” She didn’t know where the words came from; she hadn’t planned this, it just felt like there was something in her beating heart that was screaming to be spoken aloud, and Cam obliged it. “I’m going to have a tomorrow.” She met their eyes with confidence. “And I mean that literally too. I’m going to bed now. I have a duty that requires sleep and important things to do tomorrow. Don’t stab me while I’m resting or I’ll be disappointed in you.”

  There was nothing left to say. They were too new, and they hadn’t been asking questions all this time like Cam had. And none of them had ever practiced this; this opening up, this sharing, this talking. They hadn’t been learning or growing. But maybe… maybe now they could. Maybe she should have forced this conversation a long time ago. Waiting for the ‘right moment’ seemed like such a stupid idea now.

  Cam revisited every single thing she’d said as she left the two in the living room with an armory’s worth of anti-Camille weapons, and went to prepare for rest. The shower was too small for her wings, as always, but she didn’t care. The sleeping shirt she’d ripped was still damaged and less comfortable than just the blankets, but she didn’t mind. The bed wasn’t made properly, but she wasn’t paying attention.

  She had said something. Something that mattered. She had said what she meant, to someone who needed to hear it. Had she done it right? Had she made mistakes? Had it been worth it? Had it even mattered?

  Cam didn’t know.

  But no one stabbed her while she slept.

  She still set her bedroom’s alarms and had a weapon in her grip under her pillow. Because even if they really had listened, and really would change, Cam couldn’t sleep without her security blankets.

  Camille the azure shut her eyes and closed her thoughts.

  But no, not really.

  Cam fell asleep.

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