The evacuation boats were chaos made manifest.
Hundreds of people pressed against the dock barriers, children crying for missing parents, adults shouting questions no one could answer. Garrison soldiers moved through the crowd with grim efficiency, checking names against lists, organizing families into groups, trying to maintain some semblance of order in the face of humanity's worst nightmare.
Jack stood at the edge of it all, watching his three companions stare at the scene with expressions that bordered on shell-shock. They'd barely spoken since the encounter with the titan, and he was starting to worry that the trauma was finally catching up with them.
"Hey." He bumped Reiner's shoulder gently. "You okay?"
Reiner startled like he'd been somewhere else entirely. "Yeah. Yes, I'm... we're fine."
It was such an obvious lie that Jack almost called him on it. But then he saw the way Bertholdt was gripping his clothes, hand white like it was an anchor, saw the careful blankness in Annie's eyes that he recognized from his own reflection after Henrik died, and decided these kids had been through enough interrogation for one day.
"Come on," he said instead. "Let's get in line before they run out of space."
The registration process was a nightmare of bureaucracy that somehow made the titan attack feel simple by comparison. Forms to fill out, questions to answer, medical checks that consisted of an exhausted volunteer looking you over for obvious injuries and moving on.
Jack had been through similar processing before—when the orphanage had burned down, when Henrik had taken him in, when Henrik had died and he'd become the state's problem again.
The warriors, clearly, had not.
"Next!" The registration officer was a middle-aged woman with ink-stained fingers and the patience of someone who'd been doing this job for twelve hours straight. "Names?"
"Jack Kloft," Jack said, stepping forward. "These are my friends—"
"They can speak for themselves." The woman's pen was already moving across the forms. "Age?"
"Thirteen."
"Family?"
"Orphan. Guardian was Henrik Mollendorf, deceased."
The familiar litany of bureaucratic loneliness rolled off his tongue without emotion. He'd learned early that showing pain only made these processes take longer.
"Next."
Reiner stepped forward, but Jack could see the uncertainty in his posture. "Reiner... Braun."
"Age?"
"Twelve."
"Family?"
There was a pause. Jack glanced over and saw Reiner's jaw working like he was chewing something bitter. "Dead," he said finally, closing his eyes.
The woman's expression softened slightly—the first hint of humanity Jack had seen from her. "I'm sorry. Next."
Bertholdt was trembling when his turn came, his voice barely above a whisper. Annie had to prompt him twice before he managed to give his name and age. When the woman asked about family, he just shook his head and started crying again.
"Dead," Annie said flatly when it was her turn. "Everyone's dead."
Annie's POV
Everyone's dead.
The words felt strange in Annie's mouth, partly because they were true and partly because they weren't. Her father was alive, waiting for her in Marley. But these people—these demons—wouldn't understand that she was talking about the family she'd lost when Marcel died. They'd assume she meant the fictional relatives every undercover warrior needed.
She watched the registration officer's face cycle through the same tired sympathy she'd probably shown to hundreds of refugees today. Another orphan, another tragedy, another name for the growing list of Wall Maria's victims.
If only you knew, Annie thought as the woman handed her a temporary identification card. If only you knew you were giving aid to the people who killed your friends.
The guilt was becoming harder to suppress. Every act of kindness from these people—Jack's protection, the soldier's rescue, even this bureaucrat's weary compassion—felt like salt in an open wound. They were supposed to be devils, descendants of the king who'd once terrorized the world with the power of titans.
They weren't supposed to be... human.
"Move along to processing station three," the woman was saying. "Medical check, then boat assignment."
As they walked toward the next line, Annie caught Jack studying her with that same thoughtful expression he'd worn when he'd noticed her limp. He was too observant, this boy. Too willing to help people who didn't deserve it.
Too much like Marcel.
Jack's POV
Something was wrong with his new friends. Beyond the obvious trauma, beyond the shock of losing their families in the attack—there was something else eating at them. They moved through the evacuation process like sleepwalkers, answering questions with the bare minimum of words, flinching at unexpected sounds.
And they kept looking at things—the boats, the soldiers, the other refugees—like they were seeing them for the first time.
Culture shock, Jack realized. They're not from around here.
It made sense. Shiganshina was a border town, lots of people came from smaller settlements outside the main districts. These three probably lived somewhere isolated, maybe a farming community that rarely interacted with military or government officials. The formal evacuation process would be completely foreign to them.
That explained the hesitation, the uncertainty, the way they seemed surprised by basic procedures. It didn't explain the guilt, though. Or the way they kept exchanging glances when they thought he wasn't looking.
"First time on a boat?" he asked Bertholdt as they joined the medical line.
The smaller boy nodded mutely.
"It's not so bad. Just try not to look at the water if you get seasick."
"Where are we going?" Reiner asked. It was the first voluntary question any of them had asked since the wall fell.
"Trost, probably. Maybe further inland if they're worried about another attack." Jack studied the loading process, calculating numbers. "Looks like they're packing people pretty tight. We might get split up."
The reaction was immediate and visceral. All three of them went rigid, and Bertholdt actually grabbed Jack's arm.
"No," Annie said, her voice sharp. "We stay together."
"Hey, it's okay." Jack was surprised by the intensity of their response. "I'll talk to the loading officers, make sure we're on the same boat. I know how to work with the system."
And he did. Thirteen years of navigating bureaucracy had taught him which officials could be reasoned with, which ones responded to sympathy, and which ones just needed to be convinced that helping you would make their job easier.
Twenty minutes later, they were assigned to boat seven, departure time estimated at sunset. Jack had spun a story about traumatized children who needed stability, orphans who'd found each other in the chaos and couldn't bear to be separated again. It wasn't entirely false.
The loading officer, a tired sergeant with kind eyes, had bought it completely.
"You're good at that," Annie observed as they made their way toward their assigned boat.
"At what?"
"Lying."
Jack felt heat rise in his cheeks. "I wasn't lying. You are traumatized, and you do need stability."
"But we're not your responsibility."
"No," Jack agreed. "You're not. But someone has to look out for you, and I'm here."
The simple honesty of it seemed to hit Annie like a physical blow. She stopped walking and stared at him with an expression he couldn't read—something between gratitude and pain.
"Why?" she asked quietly.
"Because I know what it's like to be alone. And because..." Jack hesitated, then shrugged. "Because Old man Henrik would've done the same thing. He used to say that taking care of people was what separated us from the titans."
Behind them, Bertholdt made a sound like a sob.
Jack turned to see tears streaming down the boy's face again, but this time there was something different in his expression. A mix of grief, with something deeper. Something that looked almost like self-loathing.
"What's wrong?" Jack asked, moving toward him.
"Nothing," Reiner said quickly, putting an arm around Bertholdt's shoulders. "He's just... it's been a long day."
The longest day of their lives, Jack thought, watching the three of them huddle together like survivors of a shipwreck. Poor kids probably still can't believe this is real.
As they boarded the evacuation boat, Jack missed the way Annie's hands clenched into fists, the way Reiner's jaw tightened with determination, the way Bertholdt whispered another apology that got lost in the wind.
He was too busy planning their future—where they'd live, how he'd help them adjust, what kind of life they could build together. Yet he had no idea who he was trying to protect.