Breadcrumbs
I eased the back door open, wincing at the way the hinges protested with a long, mournful creak. Behind me, Raven paused, his gaze lingering on Earnestine as she stared out the kitchen window, clearly seeing only me—a lone madwoman talking to herself.
“Should we stay? Try to reach her again?” I whispered, an unexpected pang of guilt hitting me at the thought of leaving her alone in this bleak reality. “Maybe there’s still some form of Emry here. Maybe she’s just… elsewhere.”
“We can’t risk it,” Raven replied, his voice strained. “Did you see that soldier on the street? And if Earnestine can’t see me…”
He didn’t need to finish the thought. If Earnestine couldn’t see him, chances were no one in this reality could. And that made us—made me—a conspicuous target.
Ducking under an almost barren peach tree, we slipped through the door and onto a small concrete patio. Its skeletal branches reached toward a colorless sky, stripped of all but a few withered leaves. A single peach still clung to a high branch, bruised and half-rotten, refusing to fall, like the last stubborn memory in a mind being slowly erased.
The sight made me pause. A peach tree with fruit in February?
Something was fundamentally wrong with this reality—not just the people, but the very seasons themselves.
The air felt unnaturally still, carrying a sharp tang that caught in the back of my throat. In the distance, sirens wailed, rising and falling in unfamiliar patterns.
I patted the packet of beef jerky in my pocket, and a knotty peach in my other pocket. Rough against my fingers, the fruit’s skin pressed into my palm, a small reminder of Earnestine’s kindness in a world gone wrong.
Staying low, we crept through the bushes to the front of the house. Brittle branches caught at my sleeves and scraped against my hands where my jacket cuffs had ridden up. The ground beneath us was hard-packed and dry, as if it hadn’t seen rain in months.
“I’m hoping Emry’s car might still be here,” I said, but a quick scan of the empty driveway dashed that hope. There was no car at all—not Emry’s sleek vehicle from yesterday’s reality, not even an old sedan that might have belonged to Ruthie Russell. Either Ruthie had never owned a car, or it had been confiscated along with everything else of value.
Releasing a tired sigh, Raven shook his head. “Guess we’ll have to walk—especially since I don’t seem to exist in this reality.”
The words hung between us, heavy with implications neither of us wanted to voice. I reached for his hand, needing the reassurance of his solid presence—proof that he was still here, still real, even if only to me.
“Hey,” I said, forcing a smile that felt too tight on my face. “At least I can still see you.”
“For now.”
Hiding under a low-hanging palm tree at the edge of the front porch, we whispered and peered out at the occasional drones in the sky.
“Look at them,” Raven murmured, tracking one as it hummed overhead. Unlike the sleek, silver drones from the previous reality, these were bulkier, with odd protrusions that looked disturbingly organic. “They’re different.”
“Everything’s different.”
His parents had been removed—or at least one of Raven’s parents had been removed from The Book of Heroes—but we had no way of knowing who else might have been erased. We both knew that Aoife had had an effect on both of our lives, as had Terrence Vanderholt, and both had influenced Drusilla’s life. But there was a chance Drusilla still existed in some form—hopefully one that was still familiar and not paranoid like Emry’s last version.
“It’s like dominoes,” I whispered, watching another drone pass. “Remove one person, and everyone they’ve touched changes. Remove the right person…”
“And reality fractures,” Raven finished.
We marveled again at how the smallest interaction can have such grand effects in a person’s life over time. A single meeting, a wrong turn. All these tiny interactions make up the current reality. The farther back—or the more influential the person—the more jarring their absence would feel once the spell wore off.
“When I first met you,” I said, the memory surfacing without warning, “in Ireland. Do you remember?”
“Of course. On the Hill of Tara. You were…”
“A mess,” I finished with a humorless laugh.
“You weren’t a mess. You were heartbroken. Charlie was with Rune and lying to you.”
“And you tried to help me.” The memory warmed me despite everything. “You pressed your bind rune the scar on my wrist. You showed me the truth I couldn’t see on my own.”
“Not my most heroic moment.”
“It was to me. Even though I said no at first, even though it was overwhelming—you gave me the truth when no one else would.” My voice faltered. “What if that’s gone? What if all those moments get rewritten?”
The enormity of it struck us both—it’s just as staggering to erase a single person and their influence as it is to imagine how millions of tiny interactions come together to make a person who they are now… or to make reality what it is now.
Noting that the drones seemed to be gone, Raven grabbed my hand and pulled me along after him.
Moving quickly but trying not to draw attention, we emerged from our hiding place. The street before us was eerily quiet. Where there should have been morning traffic—cars, bicycles, joggers—there was only emptiness. The asphalt was cracked and buckled, with weeds pushing through the fissures. A street sign hung askew from its post, the metal corroded and the lettering faded.
“SERVE THE WORTHY,” declared a stenciled message on a nearby wall, the red paint still bright against the weathered concrete. Next to it, another: “THE BROKEN SHALL NOT PASS.”
“It’s weird I can still see you as I know you, but you don’t even exist in this reality,” I said as we walked. “No one else can see you at all.”
“It’s got to be related to the protection spell that kept us safe from all other charms, including The Book of Heroes,” Raven replied.
I stopped in my tracks and asked what day it was. The protection spell only lasted for three days—and we were halfway through. “Raven,” I said, “we’ve got to get back to our reality by this time tomorrow afternoon or you won’t exist anywhere.”
Ice spread through my veins as the full weight of his potential erasure hit home. My stomach clenched, and for a moment, I couldn’t breathe. The thought of Raven simply… vanishing, of losing him completely, was unbearable.
“True, I may not exist anywhere this time tomorrow—and maybe not you either. Or best case, we’re stuck here.”
“We can’t let that happen,” I said, my voice stronger than I felt. “You’ve saved me too many times. In too many ways.”
I stared ahead. “I have an idea. Let’s go to the library to see if Dru might be there. Even if Aoife shut it down, Dru was affiliated with that library before Terre and Aoife started funding it. Besides, it’s on our way to Dru’s compound anyway.”
As we walked toward the university campus, the buildings around us grew more dilapidated—windows boarded up, doors chained shut. Vines crept up walls and wound through broken fences. Nature was reclaiming what humans had abandoned.
We heard a loudspeaker announcement every full minute. At first, it was just static and distortion, the words lost in metallic screeching that set my teeth on edge. But as we drew closer, the sound clarified into a voice I recognized all too well—Aoife Jung’s distinctive cadence, flat and emotionless.
“The worthy shall inherit a new world. The weak shall serve the worthy. The broken shall not pass.”
Each repetition was identical, down to the slight pause before “broken.” It wasn’t a recording of a real speech—it was synthesized, mechanical, stripped of all humanity.
Heads bowing reflexively, the few people on the street—all elderly women, I realized with a start—quickened their pace when the announcement began. Some murmured responses under their breath, like prayers or mantras.
“Raven? Do you think the realities have shifted again?”
He answered with a shrug.
We passed an old woman on the street who looked over her shoulder at me and expressed her disapproval with a sharp head shake. Muttering under her breath that I must be another one of the Mad Ones, the old woman clearly couldn’t see Raven in this reality and thought I was talking to myself. Like Earnestine. This made me laugh—and I quickly clamped my hand over my mouth. As if the laughter confirmed it, the old woman hurried away.
“Do you notice anything?” Raven asked after we passed several people hurrying along the sidewalk.
“There are no cars on the road,” I said. “No bicycles. No scooters.” There were parked cars on the street, but they were dusty—like they’d been sitting there a long time.“
“Okay, that, too. But I was talking about the fact that everyone we see is elderly—and female.”
“Where are all the men?” I whispered. “The younger women?”
“Good question. And I’m not sure I want to know the answer.”
Turning another corner, we saw a supermarket. There was a long line outside the door. Every person in line was an elderly woman. They all seemed to be waiting for something.
The supermarket’s facade was grimy, its windows covered with heavy metal grates. A faded sign proclaimed “COMMUNITY DISTRIBUTION CENTER #17” where the store’s name should have been. Armed guards—all young men with unnaturally perfect posture—stood at intervals along the line.
As we approached, I noticed the diversity of the women waiting: some in wheelchairs with homemade wheels fashioned from bicycle parts, others leaning heavily on canes or walkers. One clutched a baby doll to her chest, cooing to it as if it were real.
“Let me do the talking,” I told Raven.
“Don’t have much choice, do I?”
Behind a woman who looked about ninety, we ducked into the tail end of the line. Hunched over so she could only look at her feet, her spine curved like a question mark, and her paper-thin hands trembled even at rest. A softly crooned melody escaped her lips—something from the 1960s, barely audible.
“Excuse me. What are you in line for?”
No answer.
“Um, excuse me. Yes, um, excuse me. What are you in line for?”
The woman ahead of her turned around. “Are you talking to my sister? Sweetie, she doesn’t have much hearing and don’t have nearly that much mind left.”
“Oh, sorry—”
“Nanette’s been deaf since the purge.” Deep grooves carved by decades of sun and suffering marked her own face like a topographical map. “I’m Salma. We’ve been waiting since dawn.”
“Dawn?”
“Yup, sun wasn’t up when we got here. I would’ve left Nanette at home, but everyone in line gets a food allotment. So that means my sister still contributes to the family.”
Raven tried to ask, “So you’re in line to wait for your week’s groceries?”
I repeated the question to the old woman.
Suspicious, Salma frowned at me. “You’re young. Too young to be out here.”
“I’m older than I look,” I lied, conscious of how my smooth skin and straight posture must stand out among these women weathered by hardship and years.
Chuckling, the woman looked at me with amusement. “We’re waiting for our daily rations. Not weekly. If you miss a day, you have no way of knowing when there’ll be more, so we hoard what we can.” She lowered her voice. “Shouldn’t say that too loud.”
“What do they give you?” I asked.
“Depends on the day. Protein bars. Vitamin supplements. Sometimes real food if we’re lucky—powdered milk, dehydrated vegetables. Never enough.” She patted her sister’s hunched back. “Nanette used to be a chef. Now she can barely remember what butter tastes like.”
The loudspeaker with Aoife’s voice interrupted the conversation again, and we waited for it to go quiet.
“Do you know if the university library might still be open?”
Salma stared at me as if I’d asked about fairy castles or dragons. “The library?” She repeated, incredulous. “Child, where have you been hiding? You’re not from around here, are you? The library—and the whole university—hasn’t been open for the last three or four years. Not since Queen Aoife turned them into laboratories and prisons. Same thing, if you ask me.”
“Laboratories and prisons—for what?” Raven prompted .
I echoed the question.
“They’re for turning grown men of all ages into super soldiers. They inject them with nanotechnology that makes them super strong and heal super-fast. They used to be our husbands, sons, brothers. Now they’re… something else. Inside and out.”
She paused to crane her neck toward the front of the line, then smiled.“See that one down there?” She pointed to a young soldier. “He’s mine.”
“Your grandson? He looks very handsome.”
From this distance, he appeared to be in his twenties—tall, broad-shouldered, with the kind of physical perfection you’d see in a fitness magazine. But as I studied him, I noticed something off about his movements. Too fluid, too precise. His joints rotated with mechanical smoothness, and his posture never wavered, not even slightly.
Scowling, the old woman corrected me. “No. That’s my husband. What you see there is what Queen Aoife’s microscopic robots can do to an 88-year-old man.”
“What?”
“He used to get winded walking up the porch steps. Had arthritis so bad he couldn’t button his own shirts. Now he runs patrols six hours straight without stopping. Doesn’t sleep anymore. Just… shuts down for maintenance.”
Unease prickled through me. Even from here, I could feel something wrong radiating from the soldier. Not human emotion, but something colder, more artificial. Like static on a radio where music should be.
“Can I…” I hesitated. “Does he still know you?”
“Parts of him do,” Salma said softly. “Sometimes he brings me extra rations when no one’s looking. Never speaks. Just leaves them and goes.”
I started to ask her another question, but something seemed to spook her, like she’d just remembered something.
Salma gestured toward me urgently. “You have to go. If you don’t, you’ll be taken.” Her voice dropped to barely a whisper. “The young women—all of them I know, at least—have been taken for genetic experiments. Some come out with blood-red hair and strange symbols that crawl under their skin. Others come out with feeble bird wings.”
“Bird wings or—”
“Angel wings?” Raven asked from behind me.
She glanced nervously toward the guards. “They don’t live long. The broken ones get disposed of quickly. Aoife has no use for what she can’t perfect.” Her weathered hands trembled as she spoke. Whether from age or fear, I couldn’t tell. “She tags them all so they can be traced. Like livestock.”
“But you and your sister are okay.? I mean, if you call living like this okay.”
“Queen Aoife doesn’t have much use for old women. At least, not yet. She’s keeping us fed and alive. In case she needs us… for some future experiment.” Salma’s voice dropped even lower. “She’s working through the population systematically, you see. Most useful first—young men for soldiers, young women for her breeding experiments. Children for testing.”
“I don’t understand. What kind of experiments?”
Raven groaned. “Oh, I do. We’re seeing the same old Aoife, but without advisors who can restrain her.”
The old woman paused, stepping in front of me to hide me from view. She watched a guard patrol past before continuing. “We’re last on the list because we’re considered… expendable. But make no mistake—when she’s done with everyone else, she’ll come for us, too.”
“For what?”
“They take young women for the genetic hybridization program,” Salma whispered, the words tumbling out as if she’d been waiting for someone to tell. “Try to splice them with something else—animal, angel, we don’t know. My niece was taken six months ago. She came back with scales instead of skin on her arms. Died screaming two days later.” Her voice cracked. “The broken ones always do.”
I felt sick. “And the men?”
“Some of the young men had a choice—my husband didn’t—but he seems happy enough with his young body. Happy enough that he doesn’t pay much attention to me anymore.” She gestured toward the soldier with bitter resignation.
“They used to let us visit,” she said. “Not anymore. Too many ‘emotional disruptions,’ they said. Too many memories leaking through.”
As she stared across the parking lot at her husband, he noticed—his enhanced vision picking out my young face among the weathered crowd of elderly women—and began walking toward us.
His movements were too smooth, too efficient. Like a predator closing in on prey. His eyes, I now noticed, weren’t quite right—the pupils slightly too large, the irises an unnatural blue that seemed to glow from within. His jaw was clenched so tightly that tendons stood out on his neck.
Fear tightened the old woman’s face.
“You have to go,” she told me. “If you don’t, you’ll be taken.”
“But what about you?” A sudden pang of guilt hit me at the thought of leaving her to face him alone.
“I’ll be fine.” Salma pushed me away with surprising strength. “I’m just an old woman. I’m invisible. You’re… valuable.” The way she said the word made it sound like a curse.
The soldier was only yards away now, his unnatural eyes locked onto me as he approached with mechanical precision.
Raven grabbed my elbow. “We have to go—now.”
“But—”
“Lilah!” he urged when I hesitated, his grip tightening. “Now!”
I cast one last look at Salma and her sister—two women clinging to each other in a world that had forgotten them—before I turned and ran. Raven’s hand found mine, his invisible presence guiding me away.
Behind us, I heard Salma’s voice call out sharply to her husband, yanking his attention back to her. Whatever she said worked. His footsteps stopped pursuing us, turning instead toward the familiar sound of his wife’s voice.
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