With another eye roll, Scarlet dropped the rake onto the half-covered garden bed and stomped off toward the house.
Michelle didn’t release her grip on the pitchfork as the hover came closer. For a moment, she thought it would pass by them and continue on to the neighbors, but at the last moment it slowed and turned into her driveway. Michelle was by no means a connoisseur of hovers, yet she could tell this was an old model. Old, but well maintained. Its windows glinted under the late autumn sun as it came closer.
She glanced back once as she heard the house’s back door clamor shut, then went to greet the newcomer, holding the pitchfork horizontally like a javelin. She had no qualms about being called crazy. She had no fear of frightening off a solicitor or some hapless city dweller who had gotten turned around on the unfamiliar country roads. She didn’t mind her reputation so long as it kept curious strangers off her property.
It wasn’t a stranger, though, who opened the door.
He had hardly changed in the years since he’d helped her set up the bomb shelter for the safekeeping of Selene. The same wrinkles, the same graying hair.
Until he met her gaze and she was forced to reconsider.
Maybe he had changed, after all. There was something in his eyes. A panic of sorts that was even more anxious than it had been ages ago. A wide-eyed haunting, a barely discernible twitch at the end of one brow.
He opened his mouth to speak, but Michelle beat him to it, yelling, “Whatever you’re selling, we’re not interested!”
Logan hesitated, his mouth still open. It took him a long, long, long time to recover from her unexpected rejection. This, too, was a change. He had always been so quick before, so sharp-witted, so clever.
“I … I am sorry to bother you…,” he stammered. His eyes darted past Michelle to the windows of the farmhouse, and she saw them stall for a moment. Just as she’d expected, Scarlet was watching. “I need your help,” he started again. “I … I think I’m lost?”
Michelle lowered the tines of the pitchfork to the soil. “Is something wrong with your vehicle? It was making a strange noise when you pulled up.”
Logan’s attention turned back to her, and his expression cleared somewhat. “Yes, I fear so. Unfortunately, I’m a regular dunce when it comes to fixing … things.” He gestured hopelessly at the hover.
Feigning annoyance, Michelle turned toward the hangar. “Sounded like some old cooling gel. I have some in here, and I can draw you a map to wherever it is you’re trying to get to.”
She didn’t look back, but she could hear Logan’s shoes crunching on the hard, cold soil as they crossed to the hangar. She didn’t look at Scarlet in the window, either, though she could feel her granddaughter’s suspicious gaze following them.
Suspicious, because that’s just how Michelle had raised her to be. She would have felt guilty about it, but Logan’s arrival reminded her how dangerous their situation was, no matter how much time had passed. Until the princess was no longer in her care, she and Scarlet would never be completely safe.
The second she heard the hangar door shut, she spun around to face Logan. “What’s happened?”
Logan’s face had that sense of nervousness again. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know you were … I didn’t think you would have…” He was struggling to think of what to call Scarlet, but Michelle didn’t inform him. To tell him she had a granddaughter would teeter too close to telling him that he had a granddaughter, and she had years ago made the decision that it was better—safer—for everyone if he never found out.
“Why are you here?” she said instead, leaning the pitchfork against a row of wooden cabinets that were peeling with old paint. “You told me you wouldn’t be back until the child was at least fifteen years old. I wasn’t expecting you for years still.”
“I know. But we can’t wait … I can’t wait any longer. We must complete her operations. We must wake her up, soon, before it’s too late.”
Michelle frowned. When he had first brought the princess to her, he’d explained at length what would need to happen when she was older. When her body was almost full grown, they would outfit her with what physical features would be necessary for her to walk and breathe and speak and be the queen that Luna needed. It had taken Michelle a long while to comprehend that he meant to turn the princess into a cyborg, which on some levels seemed a travesty, but she’d long ago come to the understanding that it was the only way. She was not one to pass judgment on cyborgs, anyway. Just one more misunderstood group, like so many others.
Still, Logan had always insisted that the cyborg operation be conducted once the child was older. To outfit an immature body with cyborg limbs as extensive as she would require would be clunky and inefficient, and perhaps even incompatible with her growing organic tissue in the long term.