Neither Nova or Sailor have time to change their expression as Genesis swiftly takes a picture of them with her phone and runs for her car. She drives away without a look back

Sailor pulls her hand away from Nova’s and begins to sign with her fingers. I’m scared. I want to go back home and wait for Daddy. 

“What did that little girl just say to you ?,” Ophelia demands. “Can she not speak ?”

“She can speak. She’s scared. We’re not use to…we…we’ve been taught to fear Helion–”

“Don’t use that fucking word around here,” Ophelia snaps. “They like to be called angels. And none of that sign language. You won’t be treated special here, do you understand ? You will work if you want a bed and meals.”

Nova nods. “I can work. Anything.”

“This is a farming operations. You both work. As long as Helion City gets it's steaks and produce on time he leaves me alone. I d–”

One of the radios on Ophelia’s cluttered desk crackles to life. “Cora to Ophelia. This is Cora to Ophelia.”

Ophelia snatches the radio and presses down on a button. “This is Ophelia. Go for Cora.”

“The carrot shipment is packed. Mikayla is read for her lesson. Do you copy?”

“On my way. We have some new ones. Humans. Clear.”

“Sorry. What was that last part ?”

“Nothing. Be there in a minute. Clear”

Ophelia straps the radio to her chest. “Follow me.”

She leads them towards a set of campground bathhouses. Nova is desperate for a proper shower after a year of washing up in the sink with the dregs of dish soap.

Sailor grabs for Nova's hand and attempts to stealthily sign into his palm. He pulls away.

Ophelia had said no signing. They needed to figure out the rules of this place before breaking them.

From the other side of the park a small group of adults and children are also walking towards the bathhouses.

The men are all MS soldiers.

The women and girls are all Helions.

Angels.

They like to be called angels.

Ophelia gestures for the group to come closer.

 “These two will be joining us.”

That seemed to be all Ophelia had for an introduction. The little angel girls start whispering to each other. One of them blatantly points at Sailor before whispering to another girl.

“Boy, go with the men and find a bunk,” Ophelia tells Nova. Nobody had told her their names and she didn’t seem interested in learning them. “ Girl, go with the women to clean up. They’ll find you a bunk later.” 

“We stay together.” Sailor half declares, half asks. Nova is surprised she’d spoken up. Sailor had only been outside a few times in her life and had never spoken to anyone who wasn’t him or their parents.

Ophelia gives Sailor a hard look. “Men and women are separate here.”

“She’s my sister. I’ll–”

“You’ll see each other at meals. You either follow my rules or go back to the city and find a Body to escort you to a Helion prison.”  

An angel woman warily steps forward and places a gentle hand on Sailor’s back, ushering her towards the group of angels.

Sailor plants her feet and another angel woman comes to help move her. Nova makes to get his sister away from them but a hand closes gently around his wrist. 

“They won’t hurt her,” a soft southern drawl lilts in his ear. “Come on.”

He turns to see a boy close to his age standing behind him.  The boy’s heavy lidded eyes were a cloudy hazel. His waxy skin had the odd pallor of the MS. 

“Colin,” the boy introduces himself. He gestures for Nova to follow the group of MS boys heading towards the rusty Amtrak cars plunked in the middle of the park behind Ophelia’s double wide trailer.

“I’m Nova.”

Colin’s lip quirks. “That’s a name.”

Nova follows him through the door of the Amtrak sleeper car. 

“If you don’t mind a top bunk you can bunk with me,” Colin offers. He gestures towards the sleeping quarter doors.

The train’s sleeping compartments were even smaller than the basement with just enough room for two beds and a sink. 

“Make yourself at home. The generator hookup is turned on at night so we have heat but there’s no running water in the quarters.”

Nova opens their hurriedly packed suitcase and takes out the few items he’d taken–some clothes, medicine and his Dads’ cell phones. The rest of the suitcase was Sailor’s things. “Thank you.”

“We don’t get many  men here. I was the last one. I remember how it felt. The others are good guys…it’s just hard for our kind to trust humans.” 

“I thought….You’re  human too, right ?” He’d heard Luce’s stories about MS having supernatural abilities but they’d seemed like bullshit. 

“I mean, I see myself as mostly human,” Colin shrugs. “But the U.S. Government don’t. It’s not so bad here. Ophelia runs a tight ship but she’s fair. Better than the Helion prison. Or Guantanamo”

“Who is she ? Ophelia ? She's one them, right ?”

“That’s a good story,” Colin grins. “Ophelia goes way back with the General. She says she helped raise him. They traveled all over the world as soldiers for hire for a long time. Like a really long time.  One night she told the General she was transgender.  Next day  she woke up and they'd all left without her. She said it’s called Abandonment. They leave a soldier behind and never speak of them.” 

“She said she stowed away on a steam ship to America. We haven’t gotten her drunk enough to tell us exactly when this happened. One of the boys asked her if she was on the Titanic and she said no cause it hadn’t been built yet. She got work as a ranch hand in Texas. Been going from ranch to ranch ever since. They don’t age like us, you know. It’s wild.” 

“She still joined the Siege after they abandoned her ?”

“Nah. Just a shitty coincidence she  says. She was visiting the city,” he says, “she tried to fly out when the Siege started but they caught her. Caged her wings,  put her in prison.  But when the embargos started fresh food got scarce. The Helions and their minions like their luxuries so he cut her a deal. She keeps Helion City supplied with fresh meat and produce and he leaves her alone.

The Regime thinks a bunch of humans do the labor. But all of us here are MS deserters and the female Helions that escaped.  Were kind of like refugees. We’ve defected from Helion City but America won't take us back Not you though. You’re different. You can go back to America. You probably should.”

“My sister and I can’t risk being caught escaping. We’re not registered.”

Colin sucks air through his teeth and nods. “Yeah. That would be a good find for any Morning Star.  How old are you ?”

“Twenty. You ?”

“Twenty-five, I guess,” he shrugs. “I was nineteen  when I joined the Morning Star. We kind of think it messes with aging….depending on when you went through the process. I was one of the earlier ones.”

“Oh. There’s a process ?”

Colin’s friendly expression wavers.  “It’s not a pretty one. But you’ll find around here no one tells their own stories.”

***

“Were you crying last night ? We heard you–”

“My name is Hyacinth–”

“–Oh, mine is Violet. Hers is Isolde–”

“–I was going to say my own name!”

Sailor sat up in bed to see three angel girls hovering at the door of her room in the women’s train car. 

She’d watched the angel trio giggling at dinner yesterday and secretly hoped they’d want to be friends. In the communal dining tent, she’d  sat with the men instead of the women so she and Nova  could  secretly sign to each other under the table.

She’d asked Nova if he thought Daddy would come for them soon.

No. Luce left. He doesn't love us. He’d signed into her palm. 

She’d ripped her hand away at that and he’d snatched it back. 

We look out for each other. He’d signed. This place is safe. For now.

 She’d laid awake most of the night in the strange little bed in the scary dark train  thinking about how Daddy probably had no idea what they’d gone through. How they hadn't left the basement at all and ran out of food. She thought he would be here too since he told Genesis to come get them.

Dad said crying wasn't allowed but she’d let a few quiet tears escape last night. Then her heart had started to  beat too fast and she couldn’t breathe. That made her cry harder.

Her room in the train car had a curtain over the doorway and she hoped no one had heard her crying. She didn't want to get in trouble.

 But now, in the light of early morning, three pairs of curious angel eyes watch  her,  waiting for her answer on why she’d been crying last night.

“I just thought Daddy would be here too–”

“ Daddies aren’t allowed here, don't worry,” Violet, the clear leader of the trio, says cheerily. “Ophelia won't let them here.”

“Yeah. Our dad hit Mama so hard she lost our baby sister when she was still in Mama’s stomach,” Hyacinth adds. “How old are you ?”

“I’m Sev–Eight.” Her birthday had been yesterday. She and Nova had shared the snack cake and she’d thought it was the last thing they’d ever eat.

“Oh. Did your Daddy discipline you with the belt ?,” Hyacinth asks.

Sailor shakes her head. “Daddy doesn’t do tha–”

“Violet got disciplined with the belt,” Hyacinth jumps in before she can get her sentence out.  “She had a big bruise on her butt. It’s gone now but I saw it.  I never got disciplined—” 

“Only cause you didn’t get caught being bad!” Violet interrupts her little sister. 

Violet points to the third girl, whose ashy brown hair was braided to the top of her head. 

“Isolde’s mom and our mom are best friends so Isolde and I are best friends too. And we’re both seven. Hyacinth is only six. You can tell us anything. All Dads use the belt—"

“Or the cane if you are a boy,” Isolde pipes up, speaking for the first time. She was softer spoken than the two sisters. “That hurts more, my brother told me.”

“Daddy doesn’t do that.” Sailor can only repeat herself. The conversation made her uncomfortable

“Our mommy says they can hide the bad things, so it probably didn't happen to you yet.” Violet explains.  “Boys are tougher. That’s why Isolde's mommy left her brother. Do you have other siblings ? Where is your mommy ? ”

“Did she die? Or get in trouble ?” Hyacinth asks. 

“I don’t have a mom.”

“Yes, you do,” Violet tells her. She knits her brows. “She might be dead. Sometimes you can die when you have a baby. Who’s stomach did you come out of ?”

“Aunt Twyla.”

“Yeah. That makes her your mom–”

“I don’t have a mom.” 

“Your mom is whose stomach you were in,” Violet explains slowly like Sailor was stupid. Which maybe she was since she hadn’t thought about where babies come from, aside from the pictures she'd seen of her Aunt Twyla pregnant with her.  “And your Dad puts you in her stomach. That's how the babies are made. My mom told me about it because I was scared I’d get a baby but you have to be alone with a boy and go through puberty first…and be married.”

“I have my Daddy and…my Dad.” She’d awkwardly tried out adding ‘my’ in front of Daddy’s name because the angel girls were doing it.

Isolde shakes her head and the girls giggle. “No, that’s not right. You can’t have two dads–”

“Yes you can,” a new voice adds.

Sailor looked up to see a fourth angel girl. 

One she hadn’t seen yesterday.

Unlike the other angels, she had a pair of glowing white wings that rested prettily against her tanned back. 

“Families come in all shapes and sizes,” the winged angel girl says. The other angel girls go quiet. “What is your name ?”

“Sailor.”

“I’m Mikayla.” 

“I want breakfast, let’s go,” Violet says suddenly. She squeezes past Mikayla to leave the room , Hyacinth and Isolde following after her.

Sailor wonders if she should follow them to breakfast. 

“Do you want to share my bunk with me ?,” Mikayla asks Sailor.  Her wings suddenly flap  and Mikayla frowns as she rolls her shoulders to cajole the wings to lay flat on her back again. “I don’t have a mom to share a room with either.”

“You have two dads too ?”

“No. My mom died–”

“Oh.”

“Ophelia raised me and  tells me all kind of things, that’s how I know about things the other girls don’t. Do you want to see my animals ?”  

“I have to go see Nova at breakfast.” They’d agreed to check in with each other at meals.

“The boys are in the slaughterhouse for another hour. They start work at sunrise. Come see my animals with me!”

Sailor shakes her head timidly. “Nova said we’re not supposed to break the rules–”

“You won’t be if you’re with me.”

Sailor hesitantly follows Mikayla’s confident stride out of the train car. A small part of Sailor wonders if she is going to see the girl fly , but instead Mikayla shows her to a bright pink  bicycle that she was instantly envious of. The wagon attached to the bike was crowded with feed bags.

Mikayla helps Sailor squeeze  into the bicycle’s basket and pedals them towards a downhill  path. The sudden momentum shift as they speed downhill surprises Sailor. 

It was fun. 

Maybe the most fun she’d ever had.

Wild, unrestrained  laughter bubbles up like a reflex as they zip past a rusted metal sign for the Central Park Zoo.

Mikayla brings the bike to a stop and Sailor wrinkles her nose at the smell. It smelled like a toilet but worse.

Mikaya drags a bag of oats from the wagon and leads her past a gated enclosure crowded with chickens. The chickens cluck aggressively as Mikayla walks pass, a few poking their heads violently through the enclosure bars.  

“Ignore them. I feed them every morning at sunrise,” Mikayala explains. “They think they are getting extra food.” 

They approach a field where hundreds of cows–some in shades of brown and others black and white like the picture books–were grazing. 

Sailor felt as though she were walking into a dream world, the winged girl next to her making it even more unreal.

The cows were more indifferent than the chickens and merely stare dead eyed as Mikayla walked through them. “The other girls aren’t allowed here– they are too loud and stress the animals,” She shakes a handful of oats into her hand and hand feeds the cow closest to her.

Mikayla offers Sailor a handful of oats to feed the cows.

Sailor thinks of Dad lecturing her about animals having germs. If a stray bird or squirrel got into the basement she'd dreamed of making it her pet but Dad would capture it, break it's neck and then made them wash anything the animal touched. She'd hated it.

Instead of taking the oats to feed the animal she reaches out to pet it's s massive back. It’s warm dark eyes peer curiously back at her. 

“They get turn into meat ?”

Mikayla shakes her head. “No. They’re heifers, they're only for milking and breeding.  They’re going to have their first calves in spring and then go to the dairy pen. Ophelia won’t let me help with the calving or milking but I do all the feeding for the new heifers. They get treated special. ” 

“How come I didn’t see you yesterday ?”

“I had a flying lesson and then went to sleep. On flying days I get to have dinner in bed and go to sleep early. It makes you really tired learning to fly.”

“You can fly ?”

She grins and there are two small indentations in her cheek. “Not yet, but one day I will.”

***

Sailor was quickly enamored by the winged angel girl and  wanted to be paired with Mikayla all the time.

Ophelia was indifferent to their developing friendship. 

She ordered Sailor work with Hyacinth, Violet and Isolde packing eggs and picking vegetables from the greenhouses. The other angel girls spend most of the workday asking Sailor if she knew about some topic and when she didn’t they’d giggle. 

Sailor was grateful the days she woke up with a fever and a headache so bad she could barely sit up. Mikayla would get sick too. Ophelia said it was because they hadn’t been exposed to germs before and they got to spend all day together in their room in the train car talking and playing games. 

The third time Sailor woke up sneezing uncontrollably, Ophelia walked her to her double wide trailer and sat Sailor behind the messy desk.

Ophelia opened her laptop computer to a screen of endless white rectangles.

“This is a spreadsheet. You see these numbers ?,” Ophelia smacked a notebook of handwritten numbers on the desk. She traced a column with her finger. “Type those numbers in the computer. Exactly like I have them written. In that order.”

Sailor had never typed  and Ophelia had scolded her for every mistake but soon Sailor was filling the spreadsheets with ease. At first , the numbers meant nothing to her but she learned that the numbers corresponded to the animals and crops and how much they were producing.

The task was boring and lonely, except when Mikayla came to visit. If Sailor finished early, they would draw elaborate comics on the drawing program on the computer.

“So, can you fly, yet ?” she’d finally asked Mikayla one night when they were in bed. They’d started sharing a bed so they could whisper at night when everyone else in the train car was asleep. 

“Not yet, it’s sooo hard.” Mikayla admits. “Ophelia hasn’t taught anyone how to fly in a long time. And my wings are so heavy. I wish I could take them off sometimes.” 

“Is that why the other girls don’t have wings ?”

Mikayla shakes her head.

“The men take them. Even from the boys. My mommy  got me away before they took mine. They killed her for it. Ophelia says when I learn to fly we’re going to get more babies out before they take their wings… then one day they’ll be a new Legion and we can fight back.”

***

The girls met their first angel boy a year later.

“Sailor, quick! Come here! Fast!” Mikayala calls from where she stood peering out of the tinted window of Ophelia’s trailer.

“I can’t.” Sailor didn’t dare break eye contact with the list of numbers she was typing. After a year of typing up spreadsheets she could type without looking at the keys now, which was good because she was behind schedule in her work and Ophelia would not be pleased.

Sailor had taken a longer than allowed break from work this morning when Mikayla came to the trailer with a worn copy of Cosmopolitan she’d found in an abandoned backpack in the woods. They’d lost track of time flipping through the pages, picking out dresses they’d wear to fictional parties and making up stories about the people in the ads.

“Come here! Come on, you have to see this,” Mikayla prods from the window.

Sailor joins her at the window to see Pathos’s white truck parked a few feet  from the trailer. In front of the bumper, Isolde’s mom was embracing a crying angel in a pretty white dress. 

Ophelia presided over the crying angels impassively.

Sailor had already known that Pathos, a Helion who’d secretly turned against the General, was coming today. She’d heard his incoming message over the radio. 

In the last year, Pathos had smuggled two more angel women out of the castle. The new arrivals didn't interest Sailor. It was usually just a lot of crying and hugging between the angels. They fawned over Mikayla and gave Sailor suspicious looks.

“Look at the backseat,” Mikayla whispers to Sailor. She presses a finger to the trailer’s window. “I swear I saw...”

She trails off as Pathos wrestles  a stoic, red faced angel child from the backseat. 

A boy.

 His dark hair was shorn close to his scalp and he wore light gray pajamas.

“Fuck no.” Ophelia snaps the moment her eyes land on the boy. She turns to Pathos sharply. “I told you no SGI. I won’t risk it–”

“He’s a child, ma’am–”

“He’s SGI.”

Pathos inclines his chin to the new angel he'd just brought in. Isolde’s mother was embracing her. “She wouldn’t leave her son behind, ma’am–”

“Don’t give me excuses, Pathos. You should have left her behind then. I don’t take in SGI.”

“I’m sorry,” the new angel sniffs. She turns to face Ophelia. “Pathos told me the rule. But I just couldn’t leave Enzo with them. He’ll be good. I promise, I’ll–”

“Enough,” Ophelia spits and turns to Pathos. “Pathos–”

“Ma’am, I’m sorry. I have to go, I’ve been here too long as it is.” Pathos turns to the angel boy, who stands straighter under Pathos scrutiny. Pathos points to the brand on Ophelia’s shoulder. “Ophelia here is  SGI–”

“Bitches aren’t SGI–”

“Quiet, boy. Ophelia trained in our homeland. She trained the General and gave him his first lashings. She’s your elder. Your obedience is hers.”

Pathos heads for his truck and the new angel calls out a series of tearful thank yous as he pulls away. The angel clutches her son to her as she addresses the quietly fuming Ophelia. “I’ll take full responsibility for Enzo–”

The boy jerks from his mother’s gentle hold and screams at her. “TRAITOR BITCH!” He throws a fist into her side. His small voice raw and angry. “YOU DISOBEYED THE GENERAL–” 

“Quiet,” Ophelia orders in a hushed tone.

“You aren’t SGI! Bitches aren’t SGI. Bitches aren’t SGI.” Enzo repeats, keeping furious eye contact with Ophelia. “Disobedience to the General is not tolerated. You will both burn in hell as traitors.”

Then he dashes off towards the still open gate. 

His mother and Ophelia race after him, Ophelia reaching him first.  She wraps her elbow around his neck and shoves him to the ground in a chokehold. With her free hand she  pulls a silver device off her belt and holds it up to his face. “Do you know what this is?”

“Let go of me, bitch–”

“This is a bolt gun–”

“–wrath of the Legion is stronger than bullets–”

“No bullets in here,” she holds the device closer to his face. “This little device shatters the skull of my thousand pound bulls in less than a second, so I can drain their blood while their hearts still beat. I want you to imagine  how it will feel collapsing your delicate skull. Imagine your mother on her knees picking your brain matter out of my grass while your heart still beats in your chest.” 

“It is an honor to die for the General and the Helion caus–”

“Enzo, please,” his mother whispers.

“There will be no honor for you,” Ophelia tells him. “Because you’ll die as a traitor surrounded by bitches.  I’ll personally make sure Helios knows that.”

Ophelia jerks her head to Isolde’s mother. “Take the mother to the greenhouse to start work. The boy stays with me.”

Enzo’s mother speaks up. “I can watch hi–”

“Don’t you dare argue with me,” Ophelia interrupts. “You bought your fucking Helion into my ranch.  How old is he ?”

“9.”

Ophelia considers this. “Older than New Aeterna?”

“I was pregnant before the Siege…Enzo’s father made me hide it so–”

“So Helios could have the first child of the new generation.” Ophelia finishes with an eyeroll.

Enzo’s mother nods.

Ophelia tightens her hold on Enzo and walks him away from his mother. She taps on her walkie talkie and the radio next to Sailor’s computer crackles to life.  “Ophelia to Mikayla. I’m heading to the trailer. Dress down.”

Sailor helps Mikayla tie down her wings and shrug on a jacket. Only the women knew about Mikayla’s wings. She kept them braced and hidden around the boys.  

The girls pretend to be engrossed in Sailor’s work when Ophelia walks in with Enzo still firmly in the chokehold.

“I want my mother–,” Enzo chokes out.

“Shut up.” Ophelia rifles through several of the crates in the office before coming up with a small soldering iron and a few feet of chain. 

She sets to work on the chain, soldering one end of the chain tightly around the boy’s wrist and the other to her own.  

***

News of the angel boy chained to Ophelia’s wrist spreads quickly through the ranch. At dinner time she cuts the chain from her wrist, attaches it to a 100 pound weight and locked the young Helion in a dog crate in her trailer. 

She announced that no one was to interact with Enzo.

With the exception of his mother, they were all to act like they didn’t see him.  

But Enzo was  hard to avoid. 

When Ophelia came into the trailer to give Sailor work for the day Enzo was there, attached by the three feet of chain.

Sailor watched the angel boy’s wrath dampen after months of witnessing Ophelia’s daily chores of birthing and slaughtering livestock. She sometimes heard him crying with his mother to take him back home to his father.

“Let me out, human,” Enzo calls to Sailor.

It was the middle of the day. He was locked in the dog crate in the corner while Ophelia was giving Mikayla flying lessons.

Sailor ignored Enzo, as she’d been instructed.

“Let me out or I’ll tell Ophelia you aren’t working.”

She continued to ignore him. He was caged to the side of her and couldn’t see her computer screen. He had no way of knowing she was actually writing a letter to Daddy and not doing the spreadsheets.

“You aren’t using the number buttons,” he says flatly.

Sailor’s fingers falter. 

She  sometimes took breaks from her work to write letters to Daddy.  She wrote in the smallest font and when she had a full page of letters she’d printed them and hid them in a hole in the trailer. That way if Genesis ever came back she would give her the letters to give to Daddy.

Not that they'd seen Genesis since she dropped them off over a year and a half  ago.

“Give me your candy and I won’t tell, okay ?” Enzo says. 

Sailor turns to look at him. His close cropped hair had grown out into soft brown curls in the last six months. He’d lost weight quickly. Since he didn't do work he didn't get a meal and had to share his food ration with his mother. 

“No.” 

Ophelia sometimes sent the ex-MS to the night markets to buy food. She’d made Nova go with them last time and he’d brought Sailor back a bag of Skittles. She was sharing them with Mikayla and they were trying to make them last as long as possible. 

“Give me your candy. I’m hungry,” Enzo says under his breath. 

Guilt twisted Sailor’s stomach. She remembered what it was like to be hungry.

“If you ask for work Ophelia will give you your own meal.”

“I don’t work for traitors.”

Footsteps sounded near the trailer door and Sailor quickly closed out the typing program.

When the door swings open Mikayla is on the other side, her wings concealed by a gray sweatshirt.  Her lessons had ended almost two hours early.

 Mikayla grins at her. “Blossom is giving birth early! Ophelia’s going to be with her all night.”

They weren’t supposed to name the animals but Blossom typically gave birth to healthy females so there was a good chance she wouldn’t be taken to slaughter for a while.

“Don’t ignore me,” Enzo calls from his cage.

Mikayla’s  eyes lock with Sailor. 

“He wants candy or he’ll tell Ophelia I wasn’t doing work,” Sailor explains.

“Oh,” Mikayla says softly. “Just give it to him.”

“I don’t want to get in trouble.”

“I don’t want you to get put in the greenhouse. It’s just candy, there’s no harm.”

It quickly became more than candy.

He wanted in on their computer games and magazines. Then he wanted to be let in on all their inside stories about the ranch.

Sailor didn’t understand why Mikalya liked talking to Enzo. She  even spoke to Ophelia on his behalf when he decided he wanted to work to earn a meal.

Enzo was tasked with grinding the dinner leftovers and plant matter into feed and packaging it into weatherproof bags for the slaughter animals. He was chained to a post behind the trailer and given a manual food grinder to do the work.

Mikayla flitted between Enzo and Sailor during the day, though Sailor was aware that Mikayla spent more time with Enzo. 

Then she finally got it. Why Mikayla liked Enzo.

He was new. 

He was interesting. 

Mikayla listened to his horrific tales about the Legion training the same way she’d once listened to Sailor’s horrific stories about starving  in the basement. 

Sailor couldn’t lose her only friend. So she joined them. 

At Mikayla’s urging, she’d told Enzo about how she’d grown up. He’d never spoken to a human just as she’d never spoken to a Hellion boy. It turned out they weren’t much different. 

They made an unlikely friend group but a bright one. Sailor wondered if they could become friends, maybe the adults could too and New Aeterna would be different. 

***

“I know what you’re doing.” Nova had pulled her aside on her way to the showers. 

The boys were locked  inside their train car when the women and girls were given their allotted shower time but she’d noticed Nova sometimes slept outside. The boys got into fights a lot and today Nova had a new black eye and an healing wound on his lip.

The adult angels had said that whatever they did to make the boys into MS made them impulsive and aggressive. 

“You’re getting too close to the Helions–”

“Angels–”

“Doesn’t matter. They aren’t like us. Don’t forget, we look out for each other–”

“Mikayla looks out for me,” Sailor argues.

And it was true. They usually went weeks without speaking. His work schedule was different from her and if she approached him at meals he told her to go away.

“She can't-–”