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“Pudge.”
“No.”
“Mr. Grumpy?”
“Even worse.”
“Mr. Grumpy Face.”
“You just added another word!”
With an armful of groceries, Axel walked in to find Chris and Leland in a mysterious and heated argument. Sitting on opposing couches in the middle of the base, they squinted and frowned at each other. Before he could regret it, he asked, “What’s going on?”
“We’re trying to name the cat,” Chris said, arms folded over her chest.
“Oh, yeah.” He plopped the grocery bag down on the table, hands planted on his hips. “We never did name it, did we?”
The unnamed headquarters cat stretched out on the back of the white sofa, a safe distance from both the people arguing about it. Even weeks after moving in, it still wouldn’t let a single member of the Lazarus team get within scratching distance.
“Maybe we would have named it by now if you would stop shooting down every suggestion,” Leland mumbled.
“I’m shooting them down because they’re all terrible.”
“I don’t see you having any great ideas! What’s so bad about Mr. Grumpy Face?”
Chris scoffed, “Everything. How do you even know if it’s a boy?”
“It’s male.” Doug appeared around the corner, mug in hand. He barely glanced at them on his way to the coffee maker. “It’s also a cat, and doesn’t care what you call it.”
Chris gawked. “How do you know that?”
“I checked.”
“How, asking?” Axel pressed.
“It’s been neutered. Not that hard to figure out.”
The cat bristled suddenly, as Leland did a poor job of creeping up on it. He startled back as the cat clung to the back of the sofa and spat.
“I’m starting to like Mr. Grumpy Face,” Axel said.
“No!” Chris insisted. “I refuse to call him that.”
Doug sighed, joining them with a steaming mug. “Is that really what you’re all arguing about?”
“We wouldn’t be arguing if…”
All three of them watched in awe as the raised hackles relaxed almost instantly as Doug approached its spot on the sofa. It meowed sweetly and lifted its short gray tail high in greeting. When he got close enough, it swiped gently for his arm. Jaws dropped as Doug lifted his hand to stroke their notoriously angry cat from head to tail. It purred.
“Why does he let you pet him?” Leland gasped.
Doug lifted a single brow above his glasses. “Because I’m the one who remembers to feed it.”
Awkward glances exchanged across the room.
“Hey, I bought groceries,” Axel said, whisking the bag away into the kitchen.
“Maybe we can get Eleina to look up a list of popular cat names?” Leland suggested.
“You think that’s going to go any better?” Doug said.
“I’ll take anything at this point.” Chris whipped her head around, scanning the base for their resident hacker. “Where is Eleina, anyway?”
-
The Hills were beautiful this time of year.
That’s what Lynn said, when she insisted Eleina come back so soon after saving the world, but Eleina herself had a feeling they were beautiful any time of year. The Margalla Hills rolled out before them, the city of Islamabad nestled in a cradle of lush green forests and craggy reddish-brown cliffs. With the Popcorn Wizard Mobile Base a splatter of neon-artificial color against the trees, Eleina and Lynn rested with their backs to the tires, each with a bottle in their hands.
“Is it weird,” Lynn asked, “after all the work you did digging up shit about the government to be working for them now?”
“A little,” she said. “I’m doing the same stuff, but… Yeah, taking orders. Only investigating what I’m told to. It’s different.”
“Kind of a bummer, huh?”
Eleina tapped her nails against the glass bottle in her hand—Rooh Afza, Lynn translated the label for her, a fruit syrup. Since she was on the road most the time, she kept countless partly-filled bottles in her bus’ fridge, diluted in their own bottles to prevent the need to mix a proper drink on the road. Instant sharbat, she said. It was impressive, how much Lynn had to account for to live the way she did. It was even more impressive that she did it all herself.
“A little,” Eleina admitted.
Lynn nudged her shoulder. “But you can leave if you want, right? Clean slate!”
“Yeah. I think I’ll stay for a while though.”
Her demeanor shifted. A knowing, solemn look in her eye appeared, without diminishing her brightness. “You have faith in your team?”
A smile twitched onto her face. “I do.”
How could she not? The Lazarus team had saved the world together, along with the unofficial help of people like Popcorn Wizard herself. They tracked down every clue Dr. Skinner had left for them until the very end of his trail. They’d gone through so much together, risked their lives for each other every day—she had no choice but to trust them, and they trusted her.
“Good.” Lynn took a swig from her bottle. “That’s important, trusting your people.”
“Yeah.” Eleina nudged her back with a gentle elbow. “And I trust you, too.”
She laughed with a happy snort, flashing her teeth. “Hey, that’s my line!”
Eleina giggled along with her, a flush creeping up her neck like she were on the edge of Hapna-induced fever again. Waking up in Lynn’s bus in a haze, groggy and fearing she was on the edge of death, she thought she saw an angel with a fiery halo. The red and orange flames turned out to be her brightly dyed hair, and in a way, that was better than an angel. Finding Popcorn Wizard meant a second chance to save the world.
“If you ever feel like you want to get away from all that,” Lynn added, throwing an arm around her shoulder, “you can come see me whenever.”
“Really?”
“Totally!” She lowered her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “And if you need anything dug up that you’re not allowed to touch anymore?” She winked.
Eleina drew her knees up to her chest. “I—Yeah. Thanks.” In a desperate effort to change the subject, she asked, “What are you doing now? You know, now that Dr. Skinner…”
Lynn sat up, staring pensively into the distance. “What I always do, I guess? I never planned on doing anything different, since I never took Hapna. But the whole world has been given a second chance. Reborn, right? Maybe I should do something else.” She tapped her head against the side of her bus and turned to Eleina again. “What are you doing with your second chance? Besides Lazarus.”
“Me?”
“Come on, you have to have plans besides work.”
For Eleina, surviving Hapna was a second chance in a lifetime of second chances.
She was reborn after leaving the Tower of Truth, scraping together a personality from a lifetime of isolation and abuse. She was reborn in that airport disaster, coughing up blood as her body reconstructed itself to save her at all costs. She was reborn again in Lynn’s bus, breaking that impossible fever. She was reborn a fourth time the same day, at Abel’s request to have her past wiped clean, granting her more freedom than ever. Eleina had been reborn again and again, which begged the question: who am I this time?
There was something about the surviving the end of the world, not just her world, that felt different. Like she should hurry up and live.
“I’d like to spend it with you,” she said, almost a whisper, unsure even to her own ears.
Lynn blinked, for the first time surprised to speechlessness. “Huh?”
She couldn’t say it again. Eleina pinched her eyes shut and lurched forward.
It was a clumsy connection, but their lips met in a lightning spark. Soft, shocking, and gone in a microsecond as Eleina jerked back as quickly as she dove in. Lynn met her gaze with wide, amber-brown eyes, shaded by her ocean blue glasses. Eleina wasn’t sure her mouth worked anymore.
“I-I—” she started, and never finished.
Lynn cupped the back of her neck and dragged her back. Crashing together again, the kiss evolved from lightning to a thunderstorm. A burning press of their lips wasn’t enough, and one became two, three, four more. Eleina shivered and was just present enough to be embarrassed when she whimpered. Lynn smiled against her mouth, humming gently.
“Hardcore,” she whispered, a constellation of playful sparks in her eyes.
-
Eleina kept a smile all the way back from the Hypercube station. As the familiar facade of a rundown barber shop approached, she adjusted the collar of her jacket as close as possible to hide her new blushing bruises. She couldn’t remember a time she’d be happier, or felt more like herself… But not so much that she wanted everyone to know about it. Yet.
She took a steadying breath as she opened the door. “Hey, everyone, I’m ba—”
“Thank God!”
Chris yanked her in by the arm and dragged her to the living area. Eleina stumbled over her own feet, panic starting to rise in her chest. “What’s going on? Did something happen?”
She stopped in front of the low table, and jabbed an accusatory finger into the room. “Can you please tell them that Mr. Grumpy Face is an awful name for our cat!”
Eleina blinked around the room. Doug had the headquarters cat sleeping in his lap, looking exhausted with whatever situation she’d just walked into. Axel and Leland hovered nearby, Leland reading aloud off a list on his phone, and Axel nodding or shaking his head at each item.
“What’s going on?” she repeated, panic sinking into bewilderment.
“We’re trying to name the cat—” Chris started.
“You three,” Doug interrupted, “have been trying to name the cat for four hours—”
“It’s a great name!” Leland cut in.
Chris snapped, “It’s not!”
Eleina didn’t get a word in before the argument dissolved into chaos she couldn’t follow. She sighed, heavy but fond, and slipped away to steal a snack from the kitchen.