If peace had ever been an option, there would not have been so many starts and stops and redoes, or wars and battles and all the other fancy names used to soften the truth behind seeming good intentions—more correctly, the whims of old men too senile for a moral compass, who’d learned to speak in tongues and train complacency in the masses for convenience—for ruling the hungry and poor was, since the dawn of the concept of need, easier than trying, and failing, to hold any amount of power over the fed, sheltered, and strong. When Death stands just over the next ridge, and starvation has crawled in where the discomfort of hunger had once been, a person will do almost anything—sign away their humanity and fight for what they don’t believe in—just for a good last meal; and when all the world falls, conquered by the faithless and damned, who will be left to wonder what could have been? What should have been? And had a single person staring down death, and hunger and disease, war they never wanted to fight for or join but had no other option to relieve their suffering without succumbing to darker deeds, and subjugating themselves to the will of those who put them in such desperation—had just one person found they had a choice, what world would be created when the others were set free? What would become from broken chains?

  And in a thunderous boom that filled the skies and the simultaneous first cry of a baby born, both forever changing the world in equal parts, the answer arrived. The vibration of all there was or would be, reverberated and the day was light as if commanded by nature to be nothing else. And when the first night fell, silence followed. The sky did not roar and the baby did not cry, and neither source of tremendous noise knew of the other. Nor could they. And when the day returned, it was the first day where chains lay broken and the world was not the same.

  Change, though, does not often happen quickly, or all at once. Rather, it’s an abundance of toddling and tumbling, and forcefully trying again despite bruised knees and sore hands. It’s gnawing on rubber rings and fingers and anything soothing to swollen gums. And it is the laughter and joy, tears and remorse, and boyish disregard for picking up socks and making excuses for forgetting. Change came with the seasons and the world went with it—leaving behind summer days and entering into the inevitable Fall. And Milo, sitting at the breakfast table, spooning cereal to his baby brother, had only just realized the change in season with the call of distant sirens.

  “David,” his mother said, breathless and trembling, “what do we do?”

  “Wait,” his father replied, his jaw clenched as he stared out the window. In a blink, he returned to his breakfast and smiled at his oldest son, “If the weather holds out, how about you come into the diner and help me hang the new signs out front today?”

  “Me?” Milo looked at his father, bewildered by the invitation. Countless times he’d asked to come along, and the answer had always been ‘when you’re older’.

  “Who else?” he asked with a smile. “Of course, you, Milo. Michael’s still too small. Sorry, maybe when you’re older, kiddo.” He rubbed the younger boy’s head and stroked his cheek as the child squealed.

  “David,” his mother’s hand pressed to her husband’s shoulder as the table began to rattle and then tremble. The dishes clattered and jostled around. Milo lifted his hands, and Michael giggled. His mother shut her eyes and braced, and his father gently held her hand as she gripped his shoulder tighter.

  “It’s almost over,” he whispered.

  “What is?” Milo asked.

  As the shaking slowed and the sirens silenced, his mother let out a hard, short breath like a sigh of relief and sorrow. The television snapped to static. She hurried across the room, turned it off, and embraced the thick of quiet like the stagnant heat just before a storm. She leaned on the counter, hanging her head, and stifling the onset of cry behind her long hair. Silence settled like motes of dust in the morning light, burning hotter than usual, as if an entire star had exploded all at once and they lived where the scar of a shadow should have been and became the settling debris of what life after remained.

  “Eleanor,” his father said, standing up from the table and meeting her in the kitchen. He stroked her arms, whispering in her ear the words of comfort she refused with shakes of her head and barely restrained sobs.

  “Mom?” Milo asked, worry filling every corner of his spirit with each tear that fell from her chin and every deeper frown his father tried to hide. He didn’t understand how or why she quickly wiped her face and put on a smile, pushing by her husband as if she hadn’t been upset a half second earlier. Or the reason for the extra dessert that night or the endless rounds of bedtime stories, extra kisses and hugs, and the snuggled morning greetings. And no matter how happy it made him at the moment, there lingered in him unrest for the unanswered question: What was that?

  And that question haunted his every day from when he’d asked it to when he’d finally gotten the answer. Especially on one day, every year, it bothered him more than the uncomfortable desk seats at school or the itch he had after a long day of cleaning at the diner. Milo chewed his lower lip, drumming his pencil against the desk. His best friend, Lukas, could hardly keep his head up, and Kelsey had taken to drawing in her notebook. The morning announcements were longer than usual and had droned on to the point almost no one was listening. The girl at the front, Tabitha, cleared her throat and finished up the details of the Bethany Wall Project and the milestone they’d met since the Resistance had reached them two years earlier. Their burrowing through the radiation of the Winter Zones had been a success and Bethany had restored trade with outside territories. It was the first time since the incident…the reason the morning announcements were taking so long. The short-term fix to a long-term problem.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

  “Today,” Tabitha said, her voice lowering into a glum stage whisper, “marks the fifth anniversary of the Mutually Assured Destruction Disaster. If we could have a moment of silence…”

  “For what?” Milo spoke up.

  “For the people who died,” she answered as their teacher rose from her desk at the front of the room. Her face had already warped with scorn.

  “It was a tragedy, Mr. Stillwater. Countless people died trying to stop them and—”

  “They failed,” he concluded. “They’re gods. Did they really think a couple thousand bombs would do anything?”

  “They’re the Horsemen of—”

  “Christian propaganda and bullshit.” Milo leaned against his desk with a curled-lip sneer. He’d spent the few free hours he found between school and working with his father at the diner, deep in the pages of every religious text he could get his hands on, and discovered that every peoples had a tale of end days—warriors, demons, and deities come from the sky to slaughter the masses like sheep for sacrifice—and the peoples accepted it with absolute complacency. And yet, it was as clear as the words on the page, they didn’t have to settle for extermination. The gods were fallible. If only someone understood the way he did, perhaps they’d listen. And so he tried, the same as he had every year to make them listen. “They came from the sky eleven years ago and have been killing everyone since, and—”

  “I will not accept this fear-mongering—”

  “No one has done anything—”

  “If you don’t stop, I’ll send you to the principal’s office—”

  “And we all sit back and complacently pretend like everything is fine, like stupid cattle outside the slaughterhouse waiting for—”

  “That is enough!”

  “Why doesn’t anyone fight?”

  His teacher’s face was the sort of red his mother’s became any time he brought up the militia. Abilities. The Hell-bound army of the Horsemen. The futility of good people unwilling to fight what wicked waited on the precipice of demise. It was like a ripe cherry tomato about to pop. And like his mother, his teacher, too, popped. Her white-knuckled fist opened only enough to jut a finger at the door.

  “Office, now,” she commanded.

  Milo huffed and collected up his books. Lukas cackled and Kelsey offered a sympathetic half-smile as he passed. It wasn’t the first time he would be sent home for saying the things everyone thought but wasn’t bold enough to say for themselves. They’d all wondered about it at one point or another but had quietly resigned to never having an answer, to accepting the military occupation of Bethany, and the looming threat of the Horsemen. But what could they do? Anyone who faced them met only one of two fates. They either died, or everyone wished they had.

  There was no returning home from the war they couldn’t win and anyone unfortunate enough to have an ability was placed at the front lines. To save themselves, many went into hiding from the military. They wouldn’t be their Hail Marys or sacrificial lambs. But in the peace of Bethany, isolated from the world by an encircling of radiated Winter Zones, those with abilities lived free. Or at least they had until the Resistance showed up. There were a lot of people who killed themselves, fearing they’d be rounded up and put into camps like those of other towns. Or so they’d heard. Milo wasn’t sure what was true, and what were just stories. He’d seen enough to realize the Winter Zones were dangerous, but also that there were hunters in special suits who’d crossed them. They weren’t as isolated as they wanted to believe, and that meant they were never as safe as they thought, either.

  Milo clutched his stack of books on his lap, sitting outside the principal’s office. His mom would have a fit when she got there to pick him up. Dragging his fingers up the edge of the pages, a thin dusting of gold trailed behind. He gasped and cramped his hands under his legs, sitting straight and taking a deep breath to settle himself. The secretary came by, took one look at him, and picked up her jar of lollipops.

  “You want one, Milo?” She smiled. “You look pretty tense again, today. Want to talk about it? Were you in another fight?”

  He shook his head, eyes wide like he’d seen a ghost. The secretary set the jar down, leaving the lid set aside, and returned to her work. Milo gulped and then put his hands over his face. The smell of metal lingered in his palms. He didn’t know what it was, or why it kept happening, but he couldn’t tell anyone. They’d tease him, or worse, they’d tell the Resistance. He saw what happened to his classmates when they developed an ability. They disappeared. Milo peeked at the door as the principal’s voice neared. He had to get it under control. If anyone knew, he’d never get a chance to fight for the freedom of humanity in any real way. He wouldn’t be able to fight for his future, or Michael’s. The Resistance would use him as an easy tool, a quick means to an end. And what good was that?

  “Mr. Stillwater,” the principal said, swinging the door open, “come on in. Let’s talk.”

  Milo stood up with a groan and hung his head. They’d talk, and he’d wait for his mom like last time, and the time before that. All the while, he’d barely listen and dream of a day when he could prove his worth, that he was right. The Horsemen may have been gods, but this was his world first. He could fight them. He could stop them. There had to be a way…even if it took a miracle, he’d find a way. He’d be the miracle.