Chapter Text
“You alright?” I said.
Victoria was sitting, legs hanging over the edge of the cliff that used to be the Brockton Bay shoreline. The waters had long evaporated, here at least.
“Yeah,” she lied. She didn’t turn around.
She got like this, sometimes, when everything got too much for her and the losses they carried with them weighed heavy on their hearts.
I let it be quiet for a moment. The sky was an ash grey from several Tinker weapons in the war for our worlds, and if it wasn’t for our splicing with the visitors we’d have long keeled over from the radioactive dust Scion had left behind in his fight against the invasion.
I flexed my six arms, noting a patch of rot I’d have to get looked at when we returned to the habitable bubbles.
The weakness of the flesh, I thought. Biblical and transhumanist.
I sat down next to Victoria, who was as beautiful as ever even in the grey mica-speckled pallor and compound eyes she now had, and I laid my hand over hers.
“I just wish… Mom and Amy were here.”
“I know,” I said, nudging her shoulder, and let her lean on me for comfort.
Mrs. Dallon had refused any of the grafting, even if she had come about to the alliance with our visitors, the resistance faction. Amy had been a real hero, if she never saw it that way, releasing super-plagues that targeted the visitors’ predators, incomprehensible world-eating things that tore rifts through the fabric of space. She’d just rejected every graft, some unfortunate aspect of her power.
She’d died quietly about a year ago, away from everyone.
“C’mon Victoria. They’re making good progress on the terraforming projects - soon we’ll be synthesizing our shorelines again.”
She said nothing.
“Plus, we’ve got ice cream.”
She heaved a huge sigh and stood up.
“Alright,” she said. “Let’s get back to the city.”
“Don’t you mean Tomorrow?” I cracked playfully. It was wan, but I’d won a small smile.
To Tomorrow, indeed.