They picked up at breakfast where they'd left off.
Bickering over the best Guitar Hero spin off. Listening to Linakra wax poetic over Power Rangers. Joking that the downfall of civilization was just one more hiccup in the release schedule for the War of Throne series.
They were trying, trying so very hard to reclaim what had once come so easy. But the laughter was shrill, the quips forced, and from time to time silence crept over them before the conversation started up again with a desperate lurch. Joy was no longer effortless but something to be nurtured, coddled, a newborn thing with spindly legs.
The plates were empty but the chatter went on, and the slow hours passed a little quicker for it. No one thought of the empty chair in the systems room or the weapons training that had been scheduled for midmorning. No one but Critic, and he chose to say nothing when he might have nagged and scolded.
He could let them have this. Could let himself have this, this precious little time.
But at last they'd exhausted themselves, cycled right back around to furry forest dwellers armed with sticks and stones, and it was then that Critic stood.
"There are going to be some changes," he said, and knew he didn't need to explain why. Not when the cause sat among them, fingers still stained from the blueberries she'd grown for their oatmeal.
They'd know all along people would come seeking what they themselves had stolen. But to have Liz here, curly headed and sunburned, made the threat real, gave it shape and substance.
"We haven't always had someone watching, and that has to stop. The heat detectors aren't enough." They ignored anything too small to be a man, but if Benzaie wore a bear's skin, could they trust that a coyote was only a coyote? A lizard only a lizard? "I want someone on duty at all times. Day and night. No games, no company. You sit, and you watch."
He paused then. Crossed his arms to give that pause weight, fighting to keep his face somber and still despite the smirk that wanted to crawl across his lips.
"And Spoony?"
He caught the man mid-yawn, but Critic couldn't much blame him for his inattention. It must have been boring, to listen to plans being made while knowing he would be given no part to play.
"Don't forget to sign up."
The words didn't penetrate at first. Spoony had lost the context, too busy wondering if Liz would join in if he started to quote Dune to pay much mind to Critic.
He scrambled to remember what the man had been speaking of, the way one does when caught daydreaming. Something about change (or was it Change?) and the monitors in the systems room.
"Don't forget to sign up."
Spoony pulled his shoulders back, lifted his chin, did his best to look capable. He knew he was being ridiculous, that being expected to take his turn was a gesture only. Already Critic was looking to Linkara, who nodded oh so seriously back, neither of them making the least effort to be subtle.
The others would sit out their two hour shifts alone, but there were unspoken rules in Molossia that came before all others. Most involved Spoony, and it would have bothered him more if they hadn't been so necessary.
He made it easier for everyone by aping ignorance. Pretended not to notice how Benzaie or Joe came scurrying to fill the space whenever Linkara left his side. Outside his bedroom he was never left alone, and his handprint could not open the door to the systems room without someone else there to key in the override.
Another empty gesture, the locks no barrier to what slept within Spoony, but here again it was easier to pretend. Linkara would keep watch over him while he kept watch over the monitors, would be there to drag him out or talk him back if the siren call of the computer overwhelmed him.
It wasn't trust that Critic offered. Just more make believe, a game to keep him occupied, but Spoony couldn't help his pride at being given even this much.
It wasn't trust, but it was something.
Best of all, he knew he'd earned it.
Critic had bigger accomplishments to lay claim to, but there was a simple beauty in the way Spoony smiled shy and flattered, in the tentative way he raised his hand to accept Mikey's high five.
Now came the hard part.
"We need to talk about what comes next," he said, "What we do when someone else comes knocking."
It surprised him when his sister was the first to speak, if only because she liked to know the lay of the land before committing herself. "I think we can all agree that Liz has made a delightful addition to our little family."
The two women smiled at each from across the table. It looked natural enough, but the mild suspicion in Liz's eyes did her credit.
"We have so much, and there are people like Liz who need help. Why wait for them to stumble across us when we could call them home?"
It wasn't the first time his sister had waylaid him in front of a crowd, but that didn't mean it didn't hurt. Just that morning she'd kissed him soft and sweet while making no mention of this plan, had shared her bed with him but not her thoughts.
"We got lucky with Liz," Linkara said, and it was some small comfort when the others muttered their own doubts.
Even Liz herself spoke out against the idea. "The things I saw..." she said, "There was a boy..."
She didn't finish, but they had their own memories to draw on. A man hung from a street light and gutted like a deer, his gut a red slick hollow, the ribs splintered and yawning wide.
"We don't take just anyone," Chick said, her tone mocking but not cruelly, just teasing them for being so very clever but not quite clever enough. "We take a vote, like with Liz."
Critic didn't remember a vote. He'd simply given in, taken by the way Liz faced the camera and sucked tomato juice from her fingers with overacted moans of pleasure.
Linkara was right. They'd gotten lucky.
"So we vote no and they just walk away, is that it?"
That was Snob, all sarcasm and crossed arms, and it surprised Critic again when his twin didn't have a ready answer. She shuffled her feet, biting her lip to make it flush with color.
'Clever girl,' Critic thought.
"Then we give 'em a taste of the turrets!" Joe rode to the rescue with hands pointed like pistols, throwing in rat-a-tat sound effects for good measure as he cut down invisible foes. It took Spoony growling to make him stop, and by then Linkara was looking more than a little green.
"I'm sure it won't come to that," Chick said as Joe dropped shame faced to his seat. "But if it does, we have the right to defend our home."
The words were matter of fact, but there was a bite to her tone, that sharp edge that Critic knew so well. The others blinked at her, taken aback because this Chick was not the one they knew, the blushing girl who followed where Critic lead.
This was his Chick, his narrowed eyed woman with a raptor smile.
"And just think," she said, "Liz brought us fresh food. We could ask for anything we wanted, anything we needed. They'd owe us."
Ah.
That got them thinking, got them wanting. Monotony had kept them scavenging for distraction, and by now even Baugh's manuals on military protocol had been devoured with greedy eyes.
But books and movies were too mundane a thing for Chick to risk invasion for. It always came down to power for her, perhaps because she'd grown up with so little of it.
"Games," Spoony said, more wistful than needy, "I'd take the shittiest FMV in the bargain bin at this point."
"I'm sorry," Critic told him, not for the first time, "We should have picked up something in the city."
But there hadn't been time to think of it, in those panicked nights of scrambling through the ruins, in those paranoid days when all the world had been the enemy. No time to remember that what was a hobby to the rest was vital for Spoony, a way of focusing his divided attentions and quieting his mental chatter.
"Games," Chick agreed, casual as a woman jotting down a shipping list. "We could broadcast what we wanted. Call it...a tax."
She did the smartest thing she could have then and went silent. And even Critic felt it, the rising excitement that felt like sacrilege. How long had it been, since he wanted more than what he held?
"What do you say, brother?"
It was sweet of her, to pretend the final call was his.
Critic tried to think it through, trying to fight back the thrill of ambition and reaching for logic. There was safety in numbers, but a greater risk in inviting in the unknown.
But there was the future to consider. Five years from now, ten years, twenty, with only the company of each other, with nothing new to say or do, only the white tiles and familiar faces...
'We'll fucking shoot each other, he thought, 'Just to break up the day with a little blood.'
It wasn't until Chick's hand pulled him down that he realized he was floating. Her eyes were fever bright and he kissed her then, waving off the mocking groans and Liz's confused yelp at seeing brother and sister in an intimate embrace.
"I vote no," Linkara said, and Critic felt his sister stiffen in his arms. "It isn't worth it."
"It's something to consider." It was hard to dismiss for Critic to dismiss the idea so readily, with that heady drive of greed singing between himself and his twin in a closed circuit. "We could set up…"
But Linkara was quick to interrupt, spreading his hands wide as if to beg mercy for the messenger. "Where would we put them?"
Twelve bedrooms, and anyone new would need to be confined until they were trusted. Critic sighed as the fantasy crumbled.
"Fuck," he said, nothing more, but that seemed to just about cover it.