The Griid-train was nearing the end of the first day of travel west when I first saw the strange creature in the distance.

I felt like a traitor when I left. I was running away from all of it. I was running from Katya's need. From Lauren's funeral. I was fleeing the emotions and heartache that would haunt me every day if I stayed. I was trading it all for a fantasy refuge. I was going to find my mother. If Perdinger was crazy, then maybe I wasn't far behind.

What did I expect to come of this? Giving a name to Zeb in the hopes it would become something? What did I think I would find there? A parent actually willing to take up the mantle and be family to me? If this woman Zeb had even found was my mother — which, to be realistic, was unlikely — then she had stayed in the West when my father came to Boston. She had already forsaken me long before my remembering.

But the fantasy and the mystery of it were far more appealing than the reality in Boston.

And so I traveled west, away from pain and obligation, toward nothing. But nothing was better than the something I marched away from.

Light was fading as we passed south of Cleveland. My mind wandered to the conversations with Lightsbane in Baltimore. The way she'd spoken so miserably of the fall of the city. Arnie's eyes when he'd spoken of the apocalypse wrought on the city by the entropy storm. And yet the Tower had healed. The city repaired itself. Across the flatness of the land that stretched for miles I could see the alien spire of the Tower of Cleveland. The farmland we moved through was tended. Hamlets dotted the landscape with workers stopping to watch us pass.

I saw the bizarre figure in the far distance. It stood just beyond the trees that lined Lake Erie. It stood watching me. SIGHT was not enough to paint it in significant detail, but there was a wrongness about it that chilled my stomach and drew my eye.

As we sped across the landscape, trying to make a few more miles before camping, my head turned to track it.

The thing didn't move. What was it that was so wrong about it? Was it even real? It was so far away that I could have explained it away as an imagining. If I ran over there to see it, would I just find an oddly shaped bush? It was utterly still.

As I strained my eyes a message suddenly flashed across my HUD. Even as it did I felt my vision swim, a nauseating swell, warping my perception of the world in a fisheye spasm.

SIGHT: 2.0

Suddenly, involuntarily, my vision seemed to hurtle across the vast fields. I could hardly direct my new powers. Like staring through powerful field glasses I couldn't seem to aim my eyes. I scanned, frantic, as my vision inspected a bramble in incredible detail from a distance that would have shamed a hawk.

I turned my head, scanning to where the thing had been, but overshot. A cardinal spread its wings, flashing red and dazzling me. I felt sick. I could imagine the creature charging across the fields at me while I was blinded by my own heightened sight.

I reined my vision in, turned my head, found it. But I had it for just a moment. The creature could move. I settled my vision just in time to catch motion disappearing into the undergrowth — a shoulder bared to me. I had the impression of armor, a Griid-suit even, but twisted and mutated. Spikes, thorns, angular joints. Then it was gone and I was left panting, my heart racing, trying to understand if I'd been visited by a demon or by my frayed, exhausted mind.

I didn't pursue it. I chose to believe I had pushed too hard for too long in the wake of what had passed only a day before.

We made camp an hour later. I had led trains without companions before, but this was the first time I had felt this lonely. I sat away from the others — the merchants and guards — as they shared food and drink by the campfires.

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I drank from a bottle. I sat alone, away from the rest of humanity. I felt both the panicked sense that I had made a mistake and the certainty that I had no alternative. I would have many more nights like this, with none I knew, none I could speak to about what plagued me. The guilt of Lauren's death. The actuality of it. The weight of my mistake in Buffalo.

But I couldn't have stayed there. Not when a distraction like the mystery of my mother called to me. Besides, I was doing my duty. Balthazar had said the suits of Boston would need to move as many trains as they could, as fast as they could, to free ourselves in case of war.

So I took what company I could from the amber liquid at the bottom of the bottle. It soothed me in a way that no friend ever could.

The second night was no different. Nor the third. I woke each morning pained and slightly sick, realizing with some disgust that I had passed out more than slept the night before. On the first morning I convinced myself that it had been alright — a cathartic release, erasing my awareness had been a response to what had happened. And yet, despite my assurances that that had been that, as the day of travel wore on I found myself considering the benefits of a nip or two. I found myself looking forward to the relief a sample would bring me that night. Nothing like the night before — not oblivion — just relaxation, unwinding the tension and emotions that clung to me like the stink of skunk spray.

But a sample became something more than a sample, and I awoke again groggy, stiff, and a little ashamed.

The letter from Racquel that Dirk had given me was no comfort. Her words were as inviting as ever. She promised a rendezvous closer to Boston, a chance to have more time together than the snatched moments of passion and carnality. There was no mention of Lauren or the conflict with Buffalo. The letter predated that. I had a sudden horrible thought. What if Racquel came to Boston to find me, to comfort me? She had some sense of my friendship with Lauren and Katya. What if my fleeing the emotional turmoil of my home city cost me a chance for that intimacy? What if she risked her time and exposure making her way to Boston only to find me gone? It made me feel stupid. It made me feel cowardly.

When I opened the second letter, I discovered it had been sent by Morningstar. I couldn't guess how the letter had made its way from his hand to Dirk's. Was Morningstar connected with The Blood? Was Dirk a known retainer of mine and the letter had simply found its way to him?

***

Hey Kid,

You put up a hell of a Falling. You went beyond what I thought you'd be capable of, and that says a lot, because I thought you'd be capable of a hell of a lot.

You brought your Scepter out. Kind of changed the game with that one. I expect we'll see more cities bringing Scepters to the field next year. Raises the stakes. But they'll have to. If they know you'll do it, and they get the idea others will, they'll do it too. When the other guy's got a bigger stick than you, what do you do? You go get an even bigger stick. It's the nature of people that got us this far since the Fall, for better or worse.

I guess you were probably worried about you and me after you killed Raph? You probably thought that meant that was it for us and our planned conspiracy. Well, I'd be lying if I said I didn't cuss you out a lot after that. I'd be lying if I didn't swear off you and having anything to do with you. But I'm a professional. I've been here before. I've killed a dozen suits. More. I stopped keeping count. It was sad, it was bad, but it was business.

I've realized I need to speak with you. You know who is favoring you, I can see that. He's more interested in you than he is in me. Might be because of how fast you're growing. Might be because I just won't play ball. I'm a little worried you are playing ball.

That worry is what got me over you killing Raph. You're a kid, but you're growing up mighty fast. You're plenty able to make mistakes now that could haunt you for the rest of your life. Mistakes that could haunt humanity to the end of days.

So that's why I'm going to bury that hatchet. I need to see you, and I want you to know you'll be safe…

***

The letter concluded with directions to a meeting place, and a date some weeks away. I supposed he needed to make the date further out to allow time for me to get the letter and arrange my train assignments.

I stewed on that letter over the days that followed. They were days that rolled over one another, the nights eased with liquor, the days spent watching the landscape mutate and shift again and again into uncountable different forms. Mountains became plains, plains became hills, then prairies, deserts, mountains again.

I felt the span of the distance between my train and my home growing wider. I had never gone so far. I wanted so desperately to take the decision back. It had been an impulse to leave. But I had a train of hundreds of merchants and guards riding in my field. There was nothing I could do to abandon them.

On the sixth day we crested a rise in the late evening and the City of Angels stretched before me.

I had never seen a sight so breathtaking. I had never imagined humanity could have claimed so much of the earth. The landscape was a sea of rooftops stretching for miles.

I had come from this place. If my understanding was correct, this was where I had been born.

But it wasn't home.

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