Trios

"We need to be ready, just in case," Leilani said. She glanced around warily. "There's so many people here I don't know."

"It's okay," Sabrina said. Leilani shivered as a sense of security welled up.

"Stop messing with me. We might miss something important," Leilani said, shaking her head to dispel the feeling. She felt a little contrite at Sabrina's expression. "It was good of you to try, though."

"I'm not good at anything, am I?" Sabrina whispered.

Ella grasped her hands, giving her a smile.

"No, I'm the one who's not good at anything," Ella told Sabrina. Leilani rolled her eyes. "No, it's true! Sphinxie is the one who's good at stuff, not me."

"Sphinxie is you," Leilani said. "You just have to merge back together, and boom!"

"And probably a real boom," Sabrina added. "What? She's got too much oomph as is," she defended.

They paused as a fleet of drones flew by overhead, toting flat pieces of metal.

"Did Cassidy build something spectacular?" Sabrina wondered loudly.

Ella and Leilani looked at her and then glanced around. People had paid attention to Sabrina's words, and the sense of tension in the air was subsiding just a little.

"You're going to be seriously scary when you grow up," Leilani said.

"Not as scary as you and Ella. I'm going to open a greenhouse and grow roses and lilies," Sabrina said. She rummaged in her pockets and pulled out a pair of ponytail holders. "They didn't bother to take them," she explained to Leilani as she held them out to Ella. "It'll keep the hair out of your face."

Ella smiled her thanks as she took the elastics. A few moments later and her hair was tamed into a pair of fluffy ponytails like Sabrina's.

"So, are you and Sphinxie really okay?" Leilani whispered to Ella.

"I don't know. Sphinxie won't talk to me right now. She's on edge about something," Ella replied. She looked around and frowned. "Did we really have so many people?"

"I think that there's another creche mixed in with ours," Sabrina said. "There's so much hidden fear floating around here. It's much more raw than ours."

Leilani's head jerked up as she stared in a far-off direction, eyes unblinking. A few seconds more and others were following suit. Ella and Sabrina exchanged worried looks, their previous calm facades cracking.

"This isn't good," Leilani whispered just before Cassidy's floating platform shot past them, heading in Lucy's direction, an unconscious Carol and semi-conscious Cassidy weighing it down.

*****

"Is this the only way," Rena asked, putting a hand on Lucy's wrist, halting Lucy's action of flicking open the small package in her hand.

"Do you have a better idea because I'm fresh out right now. We need something that can transport all of them and hide what we're using at the same time," Lucy said, frowning.

"Every second we're still here is dangerous," Aarti added. She shifted from one foot to the other. "I can feel how dangerous it's getting. It's an itch that keeps growing and growing."

"Plus, adults," Lucy continued. "You know adults. I know adults. It's not a good thing to have the creche here in one spot where the adults can notice."

"I think our actions these last few days solved that whole 'adults not noticing us' thing," Rena snapped. She winced, her hand flying from Lucy's wrist to her head. "I am never drinking when I'm of age. It's not worth it."

Lucy and Aarti exchanged amused looks. Rena glared at them. Then they all paused as the drones lurched in their intricate dance of laying down the flat metal plates they were delivering. The piles that were surrounding them had gotten to an impressive level considering that the plates were almost paper thin.

"That can't be good," Rena whispered.

"Cassidy? Cassidy, report," Lucy said, activating her communicator. The communicator's colors swirled between a dark purple, a green that almost matched Lucy's hair and stark black. "Cassidy?"

Aarti ripped the leather bracer she wore off of her arm, revealing her own communicator. It was going from milky white to black in a slow roll of color. She frowned as she looked up to meet Lucy's increasingly angry gaze and Rena's paling face.

"Court?" Lucy called, looking over her shoulder.

"On it," Court called back. There was the sound of keys tapping.

"Can they listen in on us," Rena asked, hunching her shoulders. She looked over at where Court and Jebediah were. "They can't listen, right?"

Lucy clenched her fist, crumpling the small envelope in her hand. She fought off the sudden uncertainty. She couldn't afford to show it.

Rena, for all her bravado, was hanging by a thread, her attention split between Jebediah and Aarti & Lucy. Of them all, Rena was the most afraid of the creches and the overlords. Aarti was growing angry which was her default instead of feeling fear. Lucy knew that if left unchecked, it would spiral into full-fledged berserker behavior.

Lucy wondered if the Amazons had discovered that about her friend in all these years. She assumed not from the way Aarti's mother acted. Otherwise, they would have already been aware of Aarti's archery skills, and her friend wouldn't have been running around with a rather useless half-sword.

Jebediah wasn't much better than Rena, and he was injured. He just wasn't showing it to Rena. Lucy still remembered the glimpse she'd gotten of his neck where a control collar had been. She wasn't sure how they'd gotten it off before finding the container room. He was lurking with Court, fresh shadows in his eyes and the shoulder where Trolli was sitting a bit hunched.

With the addition of Trolli, it was clear that something was coiling up hard in Jebediah, and she remembered Liberation Day in perfect clarity despite it being years earlier. She could recall Jebediah's broken state after Trolli had fallen trying to defend him. Jebediah wasn't a fighter. He needed to be protected.

Lucy's train of thought was broken when she noticed Cassidy's platform speeding her way. She frowned harder at the sight of an unconscious Carol laying beside a listing Cassidy.

"Cassidy?" Aarti said, scooping her off the platform as it came closer.

"Hurry," Cassidy whispered, leaning against Aarti's shoulder. "It's a trap otherwise."

Lucy looked up to meet Aarti's grim expression and Rena's increasingly terrified one.

It was time.