July 6, 2057 – 6:03 a.m.
A condemned motel off 8 Mile, Room 212
The television is stuck on CNN. The anchor keeps saying the same three sentences on loop.
"Unprecedented cyber-terror attack." "Historical hallucinations reported in 38 states." "FBI declares the Liberty Line a domestic terror organization."
Elijah watches from the edge of the bed, hood up even indoors. The graze on his ribs has reopened; blood spots the sheets like punctuation marks he never asked for.
Twenty-three new kids sleep on every flat surface: floor, bathtub, under the table. Amara is curled against Maya's side, Mr. Raffi clutched like a seatbelt.
Aisha sits cross-legged on the dresser, scrolling burner phone after burner phone. "We're trending everywhere. Good hashtags, bad hashtags, conspiracy hashtags. Someone already made Liberty Line merch. Bootleg shirts say 'Never Again' in Comic Sans."
Jonah hunches over his laptop in the corner, face lit ghost-blue. "Federal kill teams just got green-lit. No warrant needed. They're calling us Tier Omega now."
Kenji stands at the window, staring at nothing. Kayden sits on the floor beside him, wrists zip-tied with the soft cuffs they use on the kids his own request. He hasn't spoken since the highway.
Maya finally breaks the silence. "We saved forty-five children in forty-eight hours."
"And woke up half the country screaming," Elijah answers. His voice sounds like gravel soaked in old blood.
The TV cuts to drone footage of mile marker 67. The asphalt is cracked open in perfect rings, like something huge tried to crawl out and changed its mind. A chyron scrolls: TERRORISTS DESCRATE NATIVE BURIAL SITE
Kayden flinches.
Kenji kneels in front of him. "You wanted them to remember."
"I wanted them to change," Kayden whispers.
Aisha tosses a phone onto the bed. The screen shows Iron Patriot's verified account: a selfie in front of the cracked highway, caption "Cleaning up the mess these animals made. #BackTheBlue #HeroesDoTheHardJobs."
Likes: 4.7 million and climbing.
Jonah closes the laptop. "We can't stay here. They'll triangulate the leak in hours."
Elijah stands. The room tilts for a second, then rights itself.
"Where do we go?" Maya asks.
"South," Elijah says. "Louisiana. My mom still has the old house in the Ninth Ward. Flood took half of it, but the other half's off-grid. No cameras. No registry office within fifty miles."
Aisha raises an eyebrow. "You're taking forty-five kids and six fugitives to your childhood home?"
Elijah looks at Amara sleeping, at Kayden's bowed head, at the television still calling them monsters.
"I'm taking them somewhere the water already tried to kill everything once," he says. "And failed."
He pulls the hood lower.
"Pack light. We leave in twenty."
The television flickers. The anchor's face distorts for half a second just long enough for the viewers to glimpse something behind her eyes that isn't human.
Then the broadcast cuts to static.
In the silence, forty-five children breathe.
And for the first time in ten years, Elijah Kane doesn't whisper "never again."
He just starts walking south.